


The Clockwork Man

by adreadfulidea



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Domestic Violence, M/M, Sex Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-06-01 18:09:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15148889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreadfulidea/pseuds/adreadfulidea
Summary: A transformation.





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

Bob Benson straightened his tie and looked in the mirror. It was a small mirror in a small room. With luck that would soon be changing. Luck, he thought, and ingenuity. Bob believed in making his own fate. He always had. And he didn’t get opportunities like this every day. He needed to look right. He needed to look perfect.

It was an overcast day. The light inside the room was thin and watery and did it no favors. A stained and striped wallpaper covered the walls, blanched in places by the outlines of long hung and now long lost pictures. It had probably been there since the Roosevelt administration. The furniture was heavy, old-fashioned, and mostly broken; a chair with a loose leg, a dresser with missing handles (he had to hook his fingers under the drawers to get them open), a mattress with a rogue spring that poked him in the back every time he lay down on it. The curtains hanging across the single window had been white lace once. They provided no privacy. But in a neighborhood like this, little was expected.

It wasn’t any worse than what he grew up in, Bob might have explained if anyone had been there and if he had been so inclined. But then again, he might not have wanted to volunteer such personal information. The more people knew about you, he found, the more likely they were to prejudge you. To assume they understood something about who you were. It was better to present a blank face, a clean slate. A fresh start. They wouldn’t even give you a chance. And he wanted — no, _needed_ — a chance.

He buttoned up his suit jacket. He had three suits in total, hanging pressed in the closet. There were no wrinkles in the fabric because he did not have to lower himself to the level of his surroundings. He didn’t always dress to match; switching the jackets and the pants gave the impression that he had more clothes than he did. He was good at projecting a certain kind of image.

“You’re ready,” he said, for Bob had a habit of talking to himself when he was alone. “You’re ready for this.” He picked up his briefcase and headed for the door.

Bob Benson had three suits and a thrifted briefcase and a brand new job. Bob Benson had a plan. It was a real plan, a good one, that he had spent a long time drafting in his head. It was a plan for a man who was going places. It was a plan that was about to experience a spectacular derailment. But he didn’t know that yet.

 

 

He stopped to get coffee before arriving at the office. The tray only held four cups, so that would have to do. He paid with change, as he was running low on money and there was no one to ask for any. Not any longer. He had called about his charge card and it was still functioning; he was being extended that courtesy at least. He could make it — he would, as long as he was careful.

The first cup he left with the girl at the front desk. The second with Mr. Sterling’s secretary, who peered at him over the top of her reading glasses and then smiled. “I like you,” she said, sliding it across the desk towards herself. And then he went looking for Pete Campbell.

“Mr. Campbell isn’t here yet,” his secretary said. “He’s in late, sometimes. You want to leave him a message?” She already had a steaming mug of tea in front of her, so he left with two coffees in hand, feeling a little silly about the whole thing.

He wandered through the office until he found a central lobby area. He wasn’t sure where his office was supposed to be and wasn’t sure who to ask. They hadn’t shown him where Accounts was. Where Mr. Campbell sat? Or somewhere else? None of the people he saw — some who returned his smile and some who didn’t — were familiar. Men in suits and wingtips and women tapping across the floor in sensible heels and ironed skirts. They were all on their way somewhere. Bob hated beginnings, before he knew anyone, before he knew where he fit. He wanted to click into place, neat and proper as a puzzle piece. Without structure he drifted.

The lobby was inhabited by a man who had a ream of papers in front of him. They were spread across the table like a fan. He had his head in his hands, the heels of his palms against his ears. When Bob entered the room he looked up.

He had the kind of face you might see in a silent movie serial. Unmanageable dark hair and pale skin. Eyebrows like the stroke of a brush. He would have looked just right in flickering black and white; it would have matched the drama of his big eyes, the cartoonish shades of his expression. He had a five o’clock shadow that could have been the start of a beard or merely evidence of forgetting to shave. And he had, Bob thought, a very nice mouth. Which was the sort of thought he’d told himself he wasn’t going to have at work anymore.

“You want something?” he asked.

“I’m sorry?” Bob asked.

“You’re staring.”

Bob snapped out of it. “I’m new,” he explained. “I’m a little lost. Do you happen to know where Accounts is?”

“I do,” he said, flipping a page over. “And I wish that I didn’t. What’s with the coffee? Why two?”

“Someone cut in line ahead of me this morning,” Bob lied. “He bought mine to make up for it. So I decided to pass on the good luck. Do you want it?” He wasn’t sure why he offered; maybe it was because by the time Mr. Campbell got in, the coffee would be cold and he didn’t like to see things go to waste. He also didn’t expect his gesture to be met with hostility, but that was what happened.

“Why?” the man asked. “Did you spit in it?”

Now Bob really _was_ staring. “What?”

“Or put a little Secor laxative in it?” he went on. “I bet the boys in Accounts would think that was hilarious, me crapping myself to death. Is that why you’re here? Did they send you over?”

“I got lost,” Bob repeated. He had no idea how this conversation had gotten out of hand so quickly. He had no idea what was happening. Was he the butt of the joke? “It’s just coffee. You don’t have to take it if you don’t want to. I can give it to someone else.”

There was a long, embarrassed pause. “Oh,” the man said. His face reddened. “You actually meant that. You were actually trying to give me coffee.”

“Of course,” said Bob. “Do people _usually_ spit in your coffee?”

“Well,” he said, “If they did I would deserve it for being such an idiot. It’s just that I’ve been working all night on this thing and it’s still — Jesus, nevermind. You don’t care about that. I’m sorry. I know you won’t believe me but I am.”

“I do believe you,” Bob said. “So do you want it or not?”

“Sure,” he said, very meek for someone who had all but accused Bob of trying to poison him moments before. He took a sip of the drink, wrapping both hands around it. He seemed nervous in the aftermath of his embarrassment, his eyes meeting Bob’s and then falling away. “Boy,” he said. “I make a great first impression, don’t I?”

“You made my first day memorable,” Bob said. “I don’t mind.”

He smiled then, in a fleeting and sheepish way. He had a nice smile, too. Another item Bob was going to have to remind himself not to notice. “You got a name?”

“Bob Benson,” Bob told him, and he would have shaken his hand if someone hadn’t appeared in the doorframe and called out to him.

It was Ken Cosgrove, from the interview. He was as tall and blonde as Bob remembered. Wholesome as apple pie or a glass of milk by the bedside. “I was wondering where you’d gotten to,” he said. “Did you find your office yet?”

“Lead the way,” Bob said. He cast a smile over his shoulder as he left, blander than it would have been if they’d been alone. He didn’t expect a reply, but he did get one.

“Bob!” the man called out. He hesitated, chewing at his bottom lip like he was turning a thought over in his head. Bob, paused in the doorway, was fine with waiting. He wanted to see what happened next. “I’m Michael,” he said, finally. “My name is Michael, okay?” He held the cup he’d been given aloft, gesturing with it. “And thanks for the coffee. It’s great.”

“You just spilled that on your hand,” Bob said, because he had.

“I know,” Michael said. “It hurts like hell.”

Bob turned away and hurried after Ken. He was trying very hard not to laugh and not quite succeeding.

 

 

They called him Bobby, when he was a boy, or Junior. He was named after the man who was supposed to be his father.

There were five of them living in a whitewashed clapboard house, the kids. It was sweltering in the summer and cold in the winter. The roof leaked right over his bed. Bob slept in the attic. His window looked out over the yard, which wasn’t much except mud and rusted metal. His father bought junkers at the scrapyard and stripped them for parts. He fixed carburetors and boat motors. He’d been an aircraft mechanic in the military but that was before jail and his bad nerves. For the most part he sat in the rocker on the porch and didn’t talk and threw rocks at the birds that pecked through the glass. It was Mama that brought in most of the money, cleaning houses and taking in laundry. The cupboards were always half-empty and the kid’s clothes were hand-me-downs of hand-me-downs. There was never enough of anything.

They were one of those families that looked all alike. Narrow and freckled and fair-haired, with sour-lemon expressions. All except Bobby, who was cherubic and dark-haired. He was the youngest. Born after Daddy got back from the Penitentiary. Born a little too soon. Everyone knew his mother had been taking in boarders. By the time he got old enough to know what that meant it seemed like everyone else had forgotten, like it was ancient history. Even his father wasn’t angry. It was just how things were, sometimes. Why dwell on it?

He found a picture once, in the shed. A man in a uniform with his face all scratched out. Under those scratches he could be someone with Bob’s chin, with the same nose. Or not.

Bob was raised indifferently but not cruelly. There were so many mouths to feed and all of them asking for something. Mama was tired most of the time, so tired that she didn’t even notice she was sick until it was too late. Bobby was sixteen. He inherited her gold watch, the one she’d somehow managed to avoid selling all these years.

He pawned it to buy a bus ticket to St. Louis. She always did say he was a horse trader at heart.

 

 

Michael knocked on the door of his new office two days later. “Busy?” he asked, poking his head around the doorframe. The rest of him followed once Bob shook his head, and he was carrying a cup of coffee in his hands.

“Here,” he said without preamble, putting it down on the desk. “We’re even now.”

“You didn’t have to pay me back.”

“I feel better this way,” he said. “I don’t like owing anyone anything.”

Bob took the coffee. It must have been from the cart just outside; it was so hot that he took the lid off and blew on it to cool it down. Michael put less cream in than he did. “You didn’t owe me,” he said. “But thank you all the same.” He gestured to the chair in front of him. “You look like you could use a break. Why don’t you sit down for a minute?”

“Can’t,” Michael said. “I’ve got a meeting with Manischewitz in fifteen. Later, maybe?”

Bob took out a pen and his scheduler. “When do you take your breaks?”

Michael laughed. It was a big honk of a laugh, one that matched the voice you could hear across the hall when he got excited about something. Bob found it charming. “You’re literally gonna write it down? Am I being booked in?”

“I wanted to remember,” Bob said. “You don’t write things down when you want to remember them?”

“I leave myself notes, sometimes. And then I forget what they’re supposed to mean.” He waved a hand in the air. “We don’t have scheduled breaks in Creative. It’s just… whenever. Come find me if you need to, we don’t lock the door.”

“I’ll do that,” Bob said, and maybe it sounded like too much of a promise or an offer, because Michael took a couple of steps back from the desk.

“I really gotta go,” he said, pointing with his thumb at the foot traffic outside. “Roger’ll skin me if I’m late to this thing. He doesn’t know how to talk to Jews.”

“In that case I’ll just say good luck,” Bob told him, “unless you’re one of those people who doesn’t believe in it. And thank you for the coffee, and congratulations on getting all the way back here without spilling it.”

Michael stopped mid-stride on his way out. “That’s good,” he said, and pointed behind himself back towards Bob. “That was pretty funny, I’ll admit.”

Bob finished the coffee. He threw the empty cup in the garbage can and retrieved his blazer from the coat hook, and then he went to see Pete Campbell.

Pete had headphones on, but his door was open. “Is that the album I lent you?” Bob asked, pleased, when he took them off.

“He has some interesting ideas,” said Pete. “But I’m not sure you can codify that sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?”

“Charm,” said Pete. “Influence. Shouldn’t a man be listened to because he commands respect, not because he learned it from,” Pete gestured at the record, still spinning, “this. A bunch of tricks. A confidence game!”

“You don’t believe charm can be learned?”

Pete leaned back in his desk chair. “It’s innate,” he said. “Some of us are born fortunate and others aren’t.”

Bob unbuttoned his jacket and sat down. “And which category would you fall in?”

He meant it as a kind of joke, but Pete’s forehead creased. “That depends who you ask,” he said, with no small amount of bitterness. He took the record off the player — the abrupt scratch of the needle made Bob wince, he couldn’t afford to replace the record if it got damaged — and returned it to the sleeve. “Did you want something?” he asked, as though suddenly remembering that Bob might have a purpose in mind.

“Yes,” said Bob. He wished he’d closed the door, but there was no getting up now without arousing suspicion. “I was wondering why Mr. Sterling was personally dealing with the Manischewitz account. Is he friends of theirs?”

“Roger?” asked Pete, looking amused. “No.”

“But he’s personally invested.”

“I have no idea if Roger Sterling is personally invested in anything,” Pete said. “Why? Are you interested?”

Bob shrugged and tried to look noncommittal. “I thought it might be a good way to get my feet wet.”

“It’s not a glamour account,” Pete said. “It’s not an airline or a car. We’re talking bread and butter. It’s Jewish wine: one product and one kind of customer. And, as you can imagine, very few perks offered.”

“I’m not in this for the perks,” Bob said.

Pete raised his eyebrows. “Well. If you feel that strongly about it, maybe you should have the account. It’s nice to see _somebody_ actually do their job around here.”

“You’ll put in a word for me?”

“I don’t know how far it will go coming from me,” said Pete. “But yes.” He handed him the record. “And take that with you.”

Outside the office Bob ran his thumb along the frayed edge of the sleeve and slid the record out to inspect it. There was in fact a scratch across the ridges of vinyl, and it wasn’t a small one. Still. He was less annoyed than he might have been had their conversation gone in another direction. A record he could buy again. But connections were priceless; they were what kept you by the hearth instead of out in the cold. They were the closest thing a man could get to being permanent. And he’d just formed one and was working on another. Bob smiled. He’d been right; this place was a good choice. Tomorrow was more promising than yesterday had been. He felt giddy, like he’d gotten away with something.

 

 

Bob arrived in St. Louis with ten dollars in his wallet. The first night he slept on a park bench but by the second he’d found a cheap motel with both an available room and a help needed sign in the window of their restaurant. He swept floors and took orders and he always remembered to smile. They paid him in cash because he was too young to open a bank account.

St. Louis wasn’t much like being back home, but Bob didn’t miss it. He kept himself busy. Every stranger was a potential friend, he told himself, and tried to talk to as many of them as he could. The problem was that he wasn’t used to being alone. With so many kids in the house it had always been pandemonium, even on on the really good days. The quiet only set in after Mama passed and he fled the state to avoid it. He was so new to the city — so new to _any_ city at all. He wasn’t a very wary person. And so, yes, he fell in with a few bad crowds he shouldn’t have. Had his room robbed once or twice. Had the cook at work shake his head at him, cigarette ash perilously close to dropping in the soup he was stirring. “You dumb fuckin’ kid,” he’d say, almost fondly.

But Bobby wasn’t stupid. He learned fast. He learned the map of that city, top to bottom, all the forgotten nooks and crannies, the streets he’d never admit going to and the ones where he could hold his head up high. He learned that there was a place in his life for both, if he needed there to be. He learned where the bars were. The kind they didn’t have at home.

He’d left his virginity back in West Virginia the year before and he hadn’t enjoyed the experience. How strange, he thought, that everyone spent so much time chasing after sex and it felt like nothing. It left him confused and distressed. He had always loved affection, loved getting hugged and kissed and held. So why didn’t he like this?

At sixteen, he was starting to understand that the problem hadn’t been the sex at all. It had been the girl. When Bob closed his eyes at night and when he put his hand around himself it wasn’t women he thought of, not soft breasts and skin and long hair. He thought of broad shoulders and narrow hips. He thought of sitting by a lake when he was a kid, watching men climb out of the water. He thought of the kinds of bodies he’d only ever seen in movies. So he found a bar, and he went inside.

He was too young to be there but nobody was checking IDs. The beer was warm and the air thick with heat and cigarette smoke. It was summer in Missouri. But they couldn’t open a window, the bartender told him. They were covered with heavy drapes and if they were moved the cops could see in. Or worse, someone could throw something inside: firecrackers, burning paper, even a bomb. The bar wasn’t supposed to exist. Bob wondered if that made him a criminal.

He sat by himself with his warm beer until someone tapped him on the shoulder. That someone had very blue eyes and an intriguing smile. “New here?” he asked.

“Is it obvious?” Bob asked.

“A little,” the man said, dragging a chair over so that he could sit. “You have that deer in the headlights look.”

“Oh,” Bobby said. He was embarrassed. He had hoped he would fit in better. He might as well be wearing overalls.

“It’s okay, honey,” the man said. “We’ve all got a first time coming to us sooner or later.” He tapped a cigarette out of his pack and held it up. “Light?”

Bob didn’t smoke, but he had some matches from the motel in his pocket. He always made sure to carry a lighter with him afterwards, every time he went out. The match took three tries to strike. His fingers, when he held it up, shook with adrenaline.

“Here,” the man said, and held Bob’s wrist steady. He offered him a drag off the cigarette once it caught and Bob accepted, though it made him cough. “So what do you think of the place? How does it stack up, in your estimation?”

Bob looked out over the crowd. At the men sitting close together at tables with hands on knees or arms around shoulders. At the swaying figures on the dance floor. Touching under the low light in a way that wouldn’t be possible anywhere else. That Bob had not known was existed at all until very recently. The possibility was still green and fresh inside of his mind. When he thought about it a light turned on inside of him; he was surprised no one else could see the glow. He looked at the stage, where a man — a man? — in sequins and silk mouthed practiced words into the microphone. His throat was raw from the smoke, and his voice cracked when he spoke. “I think it’s beautiful,” he said, and he knew that this is what he had come here for. This is what he could not have had in West Virginia. And he knew, just as surely, that he would never be able to go home again.

His companion smiled. He propped his chin up on his hand. “Aren’t you sweet,” he said. There was a melancholy echo underneath the words. He tilted his head, considering. “You wanna dance?”

Bob did want to dance. He allowed himself to be led across scratched floor. “What’s your name?” he asked, but the man only smiled and shook his head. He slipped an arm around Bobby’s waist, holding him close. Bob put his head on his shoulder because that was what he had seen girls do. He let his eyes slide shut because he wanted to.

All that happened that night was dance. They did not touch in any other way. Bob never learned his name, and he never saw him again. The cops didn’t flip the place. No one threw a bomb through a window, and no one arrested him the minute he emerged into the street outside. He got back to the motel unmolested, and he stayed awake for hours listening to his own blood hum. He was exhausted and excited and he wanted to feel just the same, every night, all the time, forever.

He kissed a man for the first time on that dance floor. He let one take him into the bathroom and push him down onto his knees.

After that first man there were others. He knew some of their names. Others were anonymous, fumbling at clothing in a dark alley or a dirty bathroom stall. It wasn’t much like romance, not like men and women got to have. Very few would stay the night, and the manager at the front desk was starting to look at Bob funny, anyway. Some of them started giving him money.

They left it on the nightstand or they tucked it into the back pocket of his dungarees, slyly, a signal that he was a sure thing. He never asked for it and he never turned it down. He was still poor and he was no closer to getting an apartment of his own. The motel ate up everything he made; it was so much more expensive than rent was and he just hadn’t known, how could he have known? He thought of going to a boarding house but they didn’t seem much better. His boss took all his tips unless he got them off the table before anyone noticed. Bob wasn’t even officially an employee. Who was he supposed to complain to?

So he didn’t say no. Not even when they asked for his price up front and his cheeks prickled with shame while he tried to come up with something. He kept his head down and he took what he needed and he told himself it was only temporary. And maybe it would have been, if Fred Carnegie hadn’t walked into the bar.

Frederick Carnegie III was from Chicago, he told Bob. His father’s name was on buildings there, a wing of the hospital and the museum. They were that kind of family. Made their fortune in the railroads and then moved onto steel. He had salt-and-pepper hair and wore emerald cufflinks. When Bob admired them he took them off, right there at the table, and handed them over. No wedding ring. Soft hands with manicured nails.

“Can’t wear ‘em. I don’t have a suit,” Bob said, and tried to give them back.

“Then we’ll get you one,” said Fred, the smile lines around his eyes deepening. And that was exactly what they did, though Bob had only been making conversation and not dropping hints. But if he had a suit — maybe he could interview at an office somewhere, get in as a clerk. A real grown-up job, one where his feet weren’t always sore at the end of the day. No more taking someone home because his pay was late again that week. He could be on the books all official-like. Nine to five sitting behind a typewriter. Bob was almost seventeen. It was time to start acting like a man.

Getting the suit fitted was like nothing Bob had ever experienced. It made him feel like he was standing in a spotlight. While they waited for the alterations to be done someone pressed a drink into his hands and he didn’t even have to ask. This was what money and respect did for you. This was how the other half lived.

He almost couldn’t recognize himself afterwards. Who was that in the mirror, so smooth and scrubbed? He looked like a city boy born and bred.

And they weren’t done. Fred took him out to one of those restaurants that didn’t have prices on the menu. They brought a whole bottle of wine to the table and it sure as hell wasn’t Thunderbird. Fred ordered for him and he told him what fork to use and he didn’t make fun about any of it. He watched him instead, his eyes admiring and warm. Watched him raise the glass to his lips and push back the cuffs of his fancy new shirt. Bob knew he was handsome. He was good at making people look at him. But no one ever looked at him like that. Like he was worth something.

“Are you sure you’re old enough to be having that?” Fred asked when Bob was on his third glass of wine, and gave him a knowing smile when Bob ducked his head.

Bob was more desperate than Fred was by the time they got back to his hotel, and it was everything he had been hoping it would be. He couldn’t sleep after, too buoyed up on triumph and satisfaction. He stood at the window undressed and looked out at the city lights. If only he could have more of this, as much as he wanted, so much he got sick of it.

Fred showed him how to properly tie the knot on his tie the next morning. “Do it enough and you won’t need a mirror. It will be an instinct. Promise me you’ll practice.”

“I promise,” Bob said, and stilled Fred’s hands. “Every time I wear this,” he said, “I’m going to think about what happened the night I got it.” And then he didn’t leave the hotel for some time after that.

Two weeks later, Bob was sitting at the bar when he felt a hand on his back. It was Fred, and he was holding out an empty suitcase.

“You can fill it or I can,” he said. “Your choice.”

And of course Bob went with him. Of course he climbed into the passenger seat of Fred’s convertible. He closed his eyes and he let the wind run through his hair and he felt like he owned the whole goddamn world.

 

 

A crease was appearing between Ken Cosgrove’s eyebrows. He didn’t look like a man who worried much, Bob thought sourly. He maintained as determinedly bland an expression as he could. “Is there a problem?” he asked.

“Why Manischewitz?” Ken asked.

Why was everyone asking the same question? Why not, Bob wanted to say. It was desperately annoying; he’d thought he had the matter settled, and now he was having to sell the angle all over again to a far more critical buyer. He raised his eyebrows. “There’s something wrong with Manischewitz?” he asked. “Something I should know about?”

“I never said that.”

“Then there’s a reason you don’t want me on it,” Bob said. “If you’re interested in it yourself, I can back off.”

“Yeah, you would,” said Ken. “But no; I’m not. I just want to know why you want it so bad that you went over my head to get it.”

Bob set his teeth, beginning to understand where he took a wrong turn. It seemed SCDP was a powder-keg of unexploded rivalries. Enough ambition in one room and anything could turn into a pressure cooker. That or Ken was the type who didn’t like him stepping out of line. Bob knew from long experience how unpleasant that kind of man was. He also knew exactly how to deal with him.

“It wasn’t deliberate,” he said. “I’m not trying to elbow anyone out of the way. I was thinking I should show some initiative and it happened to come up in conversation. And I didn’t know Pete was your boss.”

“He’s _not_ ,” said Ken, sharply. “And if I catch you treating him like he is I won’t be yours for much longer. Got it?”

Bob swallowed whatever reply he wanted to make. His hands tensed, trying to curl into fists. He forced them to smooth out. Counted backwards from five to steady his breathing. Killed the urge to defend himself because it would only make things worse. All his old tricks. “Got it,” he said.

“Good,” said Ken. “Now. You know Manischewitz is Michael Ginsberg’s account, right?”

“Yes,” Bob said. “I know.”

“Forewarned is forearmed,” said Ken. “Some of the guys have had problems with him. He’s very...” Ken tilted his head to the side, like he was trying to think up a polite way to say a bad word.

“What,” Bob said, after a minute. “Jewish? So is half of New _York_.” It came out a trifle too cold; a trifle too irritated. Ken, who was watching him like a hawk, blessedly missed the undertones. He shrugged.

“I was going to say something about bats in the belfry,” he said. “He’s unpredictable. You can’t leave him alone with the clients because you never know what he’s going to say. Keep that in mind.”

Did that mean —

“So I _am_ on the account?”

“Don’t congratulate yourself,” Ken said. “And don’t ask me for anything else anytime soon. And Bob?”

“Yes?”

“Stop trying to show initiative,” he said. “We know you’re there.”

“Okay,” said Bob, nodding. “Thank you, sir.”

Ken closed his eyes momentarily. He let out a sigh of gusty irritation when he opened them. He looked at Bob like he was a walking headache. “For god’s sake,” he said. “Don’t call me that.”

Bob left the office in a state of agitation. He’d gotten what he wanted and he felt like shit about it. He needed to better disguise his ambition, but the way it was to be done eluded him. The rich and the successful didn’t have to beg for opportunities. They ticked past like they were on a conveyor belt. All that choice, Bob thought. What must _that_ be like. All he wanted was a little corner of it for himself. He wore the right clothes. He used the right phrases. He tried so hard and could only produce an imperfect imitation. The wrong fork was still tripping him up. They could smell the striver in him.

It was a bitter admission, even in the privacy of his own head. He didn’t have a solution. It was all well and good for Ken Cosgrove to hate his ambition, to think that it was ugly; he could afford to. Bob saw the degree from Columbia hanging on his wall. He’d heard about the heiress wife. Ken didn’t have to think about the late rent or the dwindling balance in his bank account or the roaches crawling the walls. That insulting silver-spoon _fuck_.

Bob was so wrapped up in his own melodrama that he didn’t notice Michael stepping out of the kitchen with a mug cradled against his chest. Not until he slammed into him hard enough to spin him sideways.

“Shi—” he said, and caught himself just in time. Caught Michael, too, before he could topple over. The mug hit the floor and bounced across the carpet. Secretaries looked over with interest, hungry for any break in the routine.

“Jesus fucking _Christ_ ,” Michael said, who apparently didn’t hold himself to the same standards of workplace conduct. He was shaking his hands off, flicking coffee on the carpet and himself. His shirt was ruined, soaked through with pale brown. “Are you running a race?”

“I am so sorry.” Bob tried to ameliorate the damage with his handkerchief but it was too far gone. Michael twitched away and he let him go; he strode across the floor to fetch the mug. The handle was cracked through. “This is all my fault. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“Clearly,” Michael said. He tugged the wet fabric away from his chest. “Now you do owe me a coffee. And maybe a shirt.”

“I’ll buy you a new one,” Bob promised. “Right now. You can’t spend the rest of the day in that thing.”

“Seriously?” Michael asked. “I was only kidding.”

“Was it hot? Did it burn you?”

“I’m fine,” Michael said. “Just sticky.” He glanced up at the clock with a slight frown. “I guess I could leave a little early. I’m always here late.”

Half an hour until the end of the day. Bob didn’t want to push his luck, but he could probably get away with that. “And I’ll buy you dinner,” he offered, which was an impulse he should have checked. And if he had been thinking clearly he would have. He had never done well with embarrassment. It flicked on the raw and made him stupid. “To make up for it.”

“Jeez,” said Michael. “It’s only coffee.” But he went with Bob to Macy’s and even took the shirt Bob pressed into his hands without protest (pale blue with a light pinstripe, better for his coloring than anything Bob had seen him wear).

“Aren’t you going to try it on?” Bob asked. Michael was turning on his heel in the direction of the cashier.

He held it up in front of him, considering. “Nah,” he said. “It looks about right.”

“If you think so,” said Bob.

The girl at the counter took a long time calling his charge card in. She was wearing very pink lipstick and as the call dragged on and on she started to press her lips together until they were a thin bright line. Her eyes flicked up to his face. She returned the receiver to the cradle and when she spoke Bob saw that the lipstick had transferred to her teeth.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, and slid his card across the counter to him. “They say this account is closed. Do you have any cash?”

He had a few dollars in his wallet, and not much more in his bank account. It would be two more weeks before he got his first paycheck. The charge card was the failsafe. Bob knew how to stretch a dollar, but even he couldn’t work magic. He had been cut off without recourse, an event he should have seen coming but somehow didn’t; not without a phone call, a warning, anything. And now he stood exposed in a room that seemed to be getting smaller. Michael was right behind him. He hadn’t said anything yet. Would he? Would he tell anyone back at the office? What could be done about it if he did?

Bob smiled to buy time. He didn’t turn to look at Michael and he didn’t make an excuse. “I’ll have to call them,” he said. “Can I open an account here?”

“Oh,” said the girl. A smile flickered across her face and then vanished like a dying headlight. She made a gesture that was somewhere between a shrug and a nod. “Um. I have to ask my manager.”

“Hey,” said Michael, and put his hand in the crook of Bob’s arm. “It’s fine. I got it.”

“No, she said she could ask.”

“I got it,” Michael repeated. He stepped around him to the counter, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket as he went and counting out bills. “Faster this way, right? You can sort out whatever’s happening later.”

Outside, on the sidewalk, Bob waited for the right words to come. The sky was threatening to snow, and Michael’s knuckles were going red. He pulled the sleeves of his jacket down over his hands. “I always forget my damn gloves,” he said. “They’re at home on the kitchen table every time I need them.”

Bob’s instinct was to offer his own, but he only had the one pair and so he couldn’t. He couldn’t pay for the shirt, either, and now dinner was off the table. The day had been a series of small failures from one end to the other, crashing together like dominos.

“You okay?” Michael asked. There was a terrible sympathy in his voice, and Bob wasn’t sure he could make it go away.

“I’m embarrassed,” he said. “That card was fine just the other day. I don’t know what happened. You’ll have to let me make it up to you another time.”

“Bob, it’s a shirt,” Michael said. “And it was an accident.”

“But —”

“They fired you, huh?”

“What?” Bob asked, alarmed. For a full minute he thought Michael knew something he didn’t. “No. No they didn’t fire me, they put me on Manischewitz.”

“I — did they? Why didn’t you tell me? I woulda celebrated.”

Bob was so surprised he forgot to hide it. “Really?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Michael said. “I don’t have to listen to Roger Sterling’s comedy routines anymore. Let’s break out the champagne.”

He grinned and Bob found himself responding spontaneously. It had been a long time since anyone had been that excited to spend time with him. And not because Bob gave him anything. There was no transaction involved. Michael was merely happy, in an honest and uncomplicated way. It opened up a warmth in the pit of Bob’s stomach, seconds before it tied in a knot.

“I wish I could,” he said. “But —” A gesture, then, back at the store; a hope that he wouldn’t have to explain further. No one who worked in finance had the kind of money problems Bob did. Not if they were any good at it, good enough to get hired at mid-level advertising firms or to have come from Brown Brothers Harriman.

“So it was your last job, was it?” Michael asked. He was nodding, like he didn’t need an answer. “The one that fired you all of a sudden.”

Bob inhaled, slowly. He tried to keep an eye on all the usual tells: flushing, nervous motions, facial tics. He’d heard certain Mid-Eastern Yogis could slow their pulse by an act of will. “I ran into some trouble,” he hedged. “Nothing too serious.”

“ It’s the worst when they do that. Never leaves you any time to plan or anything. Trust me, I know. If you’re lucky you got savings but if you don’t…” he clicked his tongue. “It can get rough. I’ve been there — I was there when I started at SCDP.”

“Who fired you?” Bob asked.

“Who didn’t?” Michael asked. “I’ve bounced around this industry like a ping-pong ball. I have a very endearing personality.”

“I like it,” Bob said, and then resolved that the next time he wanted to say something so obviously revealing he would bite his own tongue off instead. Why couldn’t he stop talking?

Michael went faintly pink. “Good thing somebody does,” he said. “Anyway. I’m just saying don’t worry about it. I see where you’re coming from, and don’t let those assholes at the office make you feel bad. Hey, I got an idea — why don’t I take you out to dinner instead? Call it a business expense if you want. We can talk shop.”

“Michael,” Bob said. “I’d like to.”

“But?”

Because he didn’t want anyone paying his way, a desire that was impossible to explain to Michael without giving the whole game up or having to invent a whole new class of lies. Bob Benson, third generation of Brown Brothers Harriman, might have gotten cut off by his rich parents. But he would also need a reason to be and what did Bob have? Only the small and ugly truth, a series of encounters in bedrooms and hotels and back alleys that didn’t amount to much, a history that trailed after him like a can tied to a dog’s tail. How could a man with no past have preferences at all?

It had always been easier for him to say yes than to say no. It had also been safer, most of the time.

“You’d be doing me a favor,” Michael said. “It would give me an excuse not to go home yet.”

“Something wrong at home?” Bob asked. They were moving down the sidewalk, like Bob’s feet had gone ahead and made a decision for him.

“Nothing serious,” Michael said. “My father’s just driving me up the wall as usual. Always with the questions the minute I come in the door. Why am I so late, where was I, how come I never want to talk anymore. He’s old. He gets bored. Besides,” he added. “We have nothing but cheese and onions in the fridge. You wouldn’t abandon me to that, would you?”

“That’s a pretty good pitch,” Bob said. “I can see why you’re an ad man.”

Michael smiled at him. “Now you’re catching on.”

They went to a diner that Michael knew, one of those places with a neon sign above it and chipped checkered tiles on the floors. There were posters on the walls for movies twenty years prior that were bleached blue and yellow by sun and age. “I know it’s not fancy,” he said. “But when I’m hungry I don’t want fancy. I just wanna eat.”

He changed into his new shirt in the bathroom while Bob looked over the menu. Kosher food, which wasn’t a surprise. A waitress approached him. She was young and platinum haired — cut Twiggy-short — and her eyelashes were so thick with mascara that they resembled the struggling wings of a trapped black moth. A dimple popped up in one cheek when she smiled. “Hi there,” she said with an air of expectation.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m not ready to order yet.”

“I can wait,” she said.

Michael emerged from the washroom. He slid into the booth across from Bob, shoving his coat aside and balling up the paper bag that had held his shirt. The soiled one he must have disposed of while he was in there. “Bug off, Sarah,” he said.

“You shouldn’t talk like that to somebody who makes your food,” she retorted.

“You’re the cook, now?” he asked, and she made a face at him and left. “What?” he asked, when Bob looked at him. “That one’s a maneater. We grew up in the same building. You don’t know it but I’m helping you.”

“Thank you for the warning,” said Bob. “I think.” He was beginning to understand why Michael worried about people putting things in his food.

“And don’t get the meatloaf,” Michael said. “It’s dangerous.”

Bob didn’t get the meatloaf. He got a corned beef sandwich and mashed potatoes. The diner had been fairly empty when they arrived but it was filling up now, people arriving on their way home from work, sliding into booths or picking up orders to take with them. Someone turned on a radio in the kitchen and he could hear the Beatles faintly playing. Outside, a few snowflakes drifted down to the pavement.

“So,” said Bob. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself, Michael?”

“What’s to tell?”

Bob shrugged. “Anything. How long have you been working at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce?”

“A year and some,” said Michael. “It’s not an interesting story. They hired me for Mohawk. I did a lot of freelancing before — this is better, it’s much more stable. And I never got to do an airline before. You know what, though? Those assholes have never given me so much plane ticket. Don they fly all over the place. I’ve never even been on a plane.”

“Well, the people at the top are the ones who reap the spoils,” Bob said. “That’s always been true.”

“But it’s unfair,” Michael said, turning a ketchup bottle over his plate. “It should be the ones who work the hardest. Don fucks around all the time and he still gets the applause. He’s not even in the office half the time. The tagline that won us Jaguar? That was me. Jaguar doesn’t give a shit and neither does the agency. I’m a hired gun.”

“Better than an unhired gun.”

Michael frowned. “Is it so bad? Me wanting credit?”

“No,” said Bob. “But it pays to be subtle about it. If you ask for credit no one will want to give you any. Let them think it was their idea. Be amiable. People will notice how useful you are.”

“Amiable?”

“It means —”

“I know what it means,” Michael said. “I’m just wondering what _your_ definition of the word is. Does Don seem amiable to you?”

“I don’t know much about him,” said Bob. “We’ve never officially met.”

“Consider yourself lucky,” Michael said. “He’s got a short fuse and he doesn’t like competition.”

“It’s hard working for someone like that,” Bob said. “I understand. I’m only saying that learning to smooth things over can help. It’ll keep him from breathing down your neck so much. Be helpful. Be present. And remember that even Don has to answer to someone.”

“Be present,” said Michael. “That sounds like it came from one of those self-improvement books. Did it?”

Bob smiled. “Maybe.”

“That might be your angle,” Michael said. “I’m not saying it’s wrong — for you. It’s not gonna work for me. I never got anything without having to scream about it first. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Besides, they’d blame me anyway. Boldness in someone else is being abrasive when I do it. I try and schmooze and I’ll be oily.”

“I don’t see how,” Bob said. “You’ve got as much right to try and climb the ladder as anyone else.”

“I’m not anyone else,” Michael said. “I’m Jewish, Bob. Which gives gentiles a very specific idea of my motivations. Present company excepted.”

Bob shifted awkwardly in his seat. The possibility had not occurred to him, and it should have. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think of that.”

“Don’t apologize,” Michael said. “You didn’t — it just sucks, okay? I don’t even know how to ask for a raise without someone accusing me of being obsessed with money. They’re never putting my name on the door. “Ginsberg” up in lights. Yeah. I doubt it.” He poked at his food with his fork. “It’s fine, honestly. I don’t want to be Don Draper. He is not a happy person.”

“He’s rich and successful and has a beautiful wife,” said Bob. “Isn’t that what happiness is?”

Michael put down his fork. He looked Bob in the eye. It was arresting, that look, and Bob froze. “No,” he said, decisively.

“No?” Bob said. “Then what is it? What is happiness?”

“You tell me.”

Bob laughed. He smoothed out a napkin to cover his confusion. “I’m asking you.”

“You first,” Michael insisted. He had a stubborn streak, Bob was noticing.

“Oh,” Bob said. “Uh, okay. I suppose you could define happiness as —”

“Don’t think,” Michael said. “I don’t want a politician’s answer. Don’t explain. Just say the first thing that pops into your head.”

“Safety,” Bob said. He was so caught off balance that he told the truth. It made him feel like he was standing on the edge of a very high building, testing the wind. He of all people knew how dangerous the truth could be. And he had committed another unnecessary self-exposure. Bob raised his hands to loosen his tie and then dropped them in a fit of self-consciousness. He thought about going outside to get some air.

Had anyone ever asked him what made him happy? He couldn’t recall.

“You think they’re the same thing?”

“I guess,” Bob said. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Hmm,” Michael said. “Interesting.”

“So what do you think it is?” Bob asked. “Happiness.”

Michael spread his hands, the corner of his mouth turning up in a half-smile. It was sad, somehow. He didn’t appear to be seeing Bob at all, but instead some place or person inside his own head. “Understanding,” he said. “Real understanding. Getting it, giving it. It’s the rarest thing in the world. That’s why so many people are unhappy.”

“If it’s so rare then how can any of us get it?” Bob asked. “What chance do we have?”

“That I can’t tell you,” Michael said. “I’m not the guy who can answer that question. You’d have to ask…” He sighed. “Somebody else.”

“Like who?”

“Somebody,” Michael said, “somebody actually happy.”

He scraped the edge of his plate with his fork, eyelashes lowered. The five o’clock shadow was worse today. “That was too much,” he said. “Right?”

“It was fine.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he said. “I went and made everything depressing and weird. You’re trying to eat your dinner in peace and I start a philosophical pop quiz. I’m always doing this, I say the wrong thing, the most disturbing thing and I freak everyone out. I’m a creep. I wish I knew when to shut the hell —”

“ _Michael_.”

Michael stopped, either running out of steam or responding to the tone in Bob’s voice. “It was fine,” he repeated, and raised his eyebrows at Michael. “You’re not a creep.”

“Okay,” Michael said.

“Say it.”

“Say what?”

“Say you’re not a creep.”

Michael’s eyes flicked sideways and then back in Bob’s direction. “Why?”

“Because saying it out loud will help you believe it’s true.”

“Oh my god,” Michael complained. “You _do_ read those self help books. No.”

“I can do this all day,” Bob said. “I really can, I am very persistent. Doesn’t have to be now, but I want to hear the words from you. I am not --”

“A creep,” Michael said. “Okay, fine. I am not a creep. There; are you happy?”

“Yes,” Bob said.

Michael tucked his chin down. He appeared to be trying not to smile or possibly laugh. “Good,” he said, simply, and picked up his water glass. The meal resumed, with the waitress stopping by to see if they needed anything else. “You want dessert?” he asked.

“A cup of coffee would be nice,” Bob said.

“You drink more of that stuff than I do.”

“I like the energy.”

“Here I was kvetching about work,” Michael said, “talking your ear off and I never asked you anything about yourself at all. Where are you from?”

“Westchester,” Bob said. “My family’s been at Brown Brothers Harriman for three generations.” He tapped his fingers on the table. That would have been his tell, had they been playing poker. His hands had a tendency to broadcast what he was keeping off his face. He was working on it. But Michael wouldn’t have noticed anyway. Bob could tell he wasn’t the type to look for the marked card, the bad bluff. He’d probably throw his cards down and walk away from the table. “They’re Yale men,” he went on, the food in his stomach turning into a hard knot. It wasn’t that Bob minded lying, so much. It was that he hated lying to good people, and the fact that Michael believed him so easily made it worse. “But I went to Wharton.”

“So you’re local,” Michael said. “Kind of. I wouldn’t have thought so.”

“What would be your guess?”

“Someplace in the midwest,” said Michael. “With big open fields and farmhouses. You have that apple-fed look people get when they spend a lot of time outdoors. Y’know, healthy.”

“Healthy,” Bob said. “I did row in college.”

“Like in a boat? They do that?”

“They do,” Bob said. Though not at Wharton, perhaps. He would have to double check. “Is there any sport you particularly enjoy?”

“Bob,” he said. “Look at me. Do you think there is a sport I particularly enjoy? I grew up on the Lower East side, kids used to kick dead rats around when they couldn’t find a ball. Besides, I was sick so often at that age the neighbours probably thought my name was measles mumps rubella. I dunno why, because of the orphanage maybe.” He skidded past that part so fast that Bob couldn’t tell if was supposed to have noticed it. “I was a reader,” he said. “I used to camp out in the library.”

“Pretty librarian?” Bob suggested.

“Nobody trying to stick my head in the toilet.”

“Sounds like it worked out for you,” Bob said. “You became a writer. I admire anyone who can do creative work. It’s not my forte.”

“Don’t envy me too hard,” said Michael. “We’re the first out the door if there’s a budget cut — why I am talking about myself, again? It was your turn!”

“I must be a good listener,” Bob said.

“You are,” Michael said, and Bob didn’t try to fight the pleasure hearing so gave him. It was nice to know he’d done one thing right today. He smiled without having to put an effort in. Michael pushed his plate aside, so Bob did the same. He had taken it as a signal that dinner was over, and it was, but not yet.

“Listen,” Michael said. “Don’t get offended, but I have to ask.” He paused and it was awful and ominous and took ten years to end. Nothing good had ever come of _I have to ask_. Bob’s blood pressure spiked so badly that he almost didn’t hear the next part. “Do you need some money?”

“I’m sorry?” he said.

“I mean that I could lend you some if you did,” said Michael. “I only look like I’m broke, right? I have some savings.”

Bob took a second to collect himself. It was all so unexpected. Generous, but — was he serious? Where were the inevitable strings? Jesus, did he know what he was doing? Nobody handed over cash to a stranger without expecting something in return. Without a trade, a favor in the works down the road. That wasn’t how the world worked.

“Michael,” he said. “You don’t even know me. I could walk out the door tomorrow and you might never see me again. Or your money.”

“I know,” Michael said, reasonably. “I wouldn’t lend you anything I couldn’t afford to lose.” He shrugged. “If you don’t want to, fine. Just thought I’d offer. Better than a loan shark.”

“I —” Bob said. He shook his head, and then stopped. It was insane, and yet. He really didn’t have any money. There were places he could go to get some and he knew them all. The right bars, the right parties, the right clothes and a certain smile would get him what he needed, even now. He had survived this kind of desperation before.

But he was tired of desperation. He was tired of survival. It was supposed to be different, his fresh start.

“I’ll pay you back,” he said.

Michael was taking his wallet out and getting up to go to the register. “Sure.”

“I will,” Bob said. “My first paycheck.”

“I believe you,” he said. “But there’s no rush.”

“Thank you,” Bob said.

“Don’t thank me yet,” said Michael. “Wait ‘til I get to the bank. There might have been a robbery or something.”

“They’d still have to give you your money. It belongs to you, not them.”

“Oh,” said Michael. “Well, that’s nice.” He scratched the stubble on his upper lip while they waited in line behind a pensioner who was counting out pennies and made a face. “God,” he said. “This shit itches. I can’t wait for it to be grown out.”

“Grown out?”

“I was thinking a mustache,” he said. “I don’t get much of a beard.”

Bob made as noncommittal a noise as he could manage but apparently it wasn’t noncommittal enough, because Michael zeroed in on him immediately.

“What?” he asked.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You thought it.”

“I did not.”

“You _did_.”

“I’m not sure it would suit,” said Bob, and then buttoned his lips and waited to see how Michael was taking it.

“I see,” said Michael. “Maybe I shouldn’t lend money to someone so critical of my style.” He followed up with a laugh, big and wild in the full-throttle way he did everything, and he was such a strange guy. He was so odd and Bob liked him so much.

It had been a long day. He had plenty of time to think it over on the way home, the subway lights flickering into darkness off and on. Was it the lights, or were his eyelids closing? He was tired. But he no longer felt defeated. It was one bad day. Tomorrow he would try again. He would do better. He always did.

 

 

The next day Michael arrived at work with a freshly shaven face. He was wearing his new shirt. “Shut up, Bob,” he said, covering his mouth with a cupped hand as he passed by.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be warned that there are depictions of domestic violence in this chapter, as well as the usage of slurs.

 

 

 

At sixteen, Bob got into his boyfriend’s Cadillac and drove away from his old life. At nineteen, he sat on the edge of Manolo Colon’s bed in Palm Springs and nursed a black eye while Manolo checked his teeth to make sure they weren’t loose.

“It’s only a fat lip,” he said. “I don’t think it will scar, either.”

Manolo had been a medical student in Argentina, or at least that was what he said. He got kicked out. When Bob asked what for he’d smirked and said, “you know.” He didn’t seem to regret it much, not that or anything that followed after. He met Bob when he’d been the masseuse of a Hollywood director who ran in the same circles Fred did. That species of rich man always found one another. But so did their companions, and they were good at having conversations where their lovers or bosses couldn’t hear.

“Lucky me,” Bob said. He touched the cut on his lip, prodded it with his tongue and tasted tin. It wasn’t the first time Fred had laid into him. It was the first time he’d left such a visible bruise. Usually he hit with an open hand, or where it wouldn’t show.

It started with a slap in the middle of an argument. Back then Bob thought that he _could_ argue, that he was allowed to do so because they were in a relationship and people in relationships did not always agree. His parents didn’t always agree but his father never hit anyone; not his wife and not his kids. Bob had never been spanked or locked in his bedroom or had what few toys he had taken away. He was not prepared to handle a man like Fred. He didn’t see him coming, and that was the worst part.

He couldn’t remember what he’d said. Maybe it had been nasty or rude, a comment that was truly unacceptable, but he didn’t think so. Bob was polite. He wanted to be liked. He didn’t fight back; he staggered sideways, shocked, grabbing at his face like that was going to make it stop. The sting of Fred’s palm across his cheek had been bad. The berating was worse. Fred called him so many terrible things, but what hurt the most was that he said Bob was a dumb fucking yokel. “You’re a hillbilly with aspirations,” he’d hissed. “You should be grateful I got you out of whatever holler you came from.”

Fred hadn’t done that for him. He had done that for himself.

Bob spent the night wandering the streets. To complete the cliché he bought a bottle of strawberry wine and drank it out of a paper bag, the whole time thinking about what Fred would say about his tastes. Fuck Fred anyway, he decided. He could go back to West Virginia and get a job in the mines if he needed to. He could write this off as a misadventure, and get married to a local girl, and have a bunch of kids —

His stomach turned. He was sick into a nearby garbage can, one out back of a Mexican restaurant. “Hey!” the cook yelled from a window, watching him. “Vamoose!”

Bob was hollowed out by the time he got back home. Fred, who met him at the front door, was frantic. He was almost in tears.

He hadn’t slept, he said. He had waited up all night concocting worst-case scenarios for where Bob had gone. And he admitted it was his own fault. He didn’t know what had come over him, he said. He would never do anything like that again. “All I want,” he said, “is to make you happy.”

Bob considered leaving, still. He was so angry. Fred wouldn’t be able to stop him. But he didn’t have anyone else or any real place to go. Only that West Virginia holler, only a future he didn’t want reaching its arms out to grab him. Who was he, if all this was for nothing? What was he gonna do, go to church and pretend to like screwing his wife and die of black lung?

And Fred was so apologetic. He’d made a mistake. If Bob believed anything, it was that mistakes could be corrected, that nothing was inevitable or too broken to be saved. He believed in forgiveness, too, and in love. It was the only thing he ever took away from all those overheated Sunday mornings sitting in the family pew and fanning himself with a prayer book. He believed in the sun coming out from behind the clouds.

So he took Fred back. He forgave him. He believed everything he said, right up until the next time.

By the time he was in Manolo’s apartment pressing ice to his swollen eye the new status quo had been holding for a year. Bob had spent nights out by the pool in their apartment complex or with friends or with men he’d picked up just to have a place to sleep that wasn’t his own bedroom. He’d had crockery thrown at him. He’d learned to water Fred’s drinks down, because it got worse when he was trashed. He’d gotten good at predicting the explosions but hadn’t been able to avoid them all. And finally, after many false starts, he packed up his things and left.

The neighbors called the police over the latest incident. A rare thing for as rich and sequestered a group as they were. There was a conspiracy of silence in communities above a certain income per capita, he found. They were trained from birth to look the other way. Yet one of them had called, and when he felt generous he thought they had been truly concerned for his wellbeing. When he didn’t he thought they wanted the faggots out of their building.

No one got arrested because Bob left as soon as he heard the sirens. He stuffed what he could in a bag went out via the maid’s entrance and then the service elevator. He had never caught a sodomy charge and he didn’t intend to. The taste of blood was still in his mouth. His eye was rapidly puffing up, narrowing his field of vision. He escaped notice by keeping his head down and acting like he knew where he was going. There was a payphone around the corner. He used it to do the sensible thing and call Manolo.

“Keep the ice on,” Manolo advised him. “I know it doesn’t seem like it but it will help.” He gave him a warm beer and Bob drank it on his tiny balcony in the dry Palm Springs air and thought, what am I going to do, what am I going to do, what am I supposed to do?

 

 

Bob slept in the next day. He woke with a renewed energy, no matter how badly looking in the mirror made him flinch. Bruises were always more dramatic in the morning. But he had come up with a solution. He was going to make a project of himself.

His first mistake had been viewing his arrangement with Fred as anything but business. He had never been in a relationship before, and if that was what the inside of one looked like then he didn’t want to be again. Or not until he was steadier on his feet, with his own money, his own place, his own car. His own life. He had thought of himself as a boyfriend when he had been an employee the whole time. He wouldn’t do that again. Bob would seek clarity and honesty from this point forward. He would be brutal with himself if he needed to be; he would decide what was, and wasn’t, up for sale. Bob remembered the sting of poverty too well to blush at his own mercenary tendencies.

Everyone was selling or buying something. Most of them just refused to admit it.

His first order of business was to write down all his strengths and all his flaws. In doing so he discovered that his finger was sprained, an injury from last night that he had somehow managed to miss. He tried to remember when it had happened. Had it been when he’d fallen? Had he tried to brace himself and hurt his hand? Or had he raised a hand to shield his face? He didn’t know.

The urge to cry bubbled up. He’d been dry-eyed throughout it all the previous night, but here it was. The payment coming due. Bob bit down until the spasm passed, his hitching breath slowing down. And he was very glad that he was alone.

Get up, he told himself. Get up get get up. It had gotten him off the floor last night and it worked as well today. He went back to the list.

Manolo got back around four and got dressed to go out immediately. He didn’t want to miss happy hour, he said. “I’ll take you with me when you look better,” he told Bob, patting him on the cheek.

“I’ll leave dinner in fridge,” said Bob. Cooking was another thing he was trying to teach himself to do. It would be useful. He would be useful. “You need me to be out of here for when you get back?”

“Not that kind of evening,” Manolo said with a wink.

Bob woke as soon as the door opened. He’d only been dozing, anyway. The bedside clock said it was half-past eleven. Manolo came in and started getting undressed. He smelled faintly of whisky but Bob knew that was only for show. It was Manolo who showed him how to make it seem like he was drinking without taking anything in, the trick of carrying the same drink around for an hour and then switching it up for another so no one caught on. With Fred, keeping his head on straight had been very important. He drove like a maniac when he was in the bottle, for one thing. Somebody had to get them home.

Bob pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes to chase off whatever dream he’d been having. It must have been unpleasant, because his heart was racing. “Have a good time?” he asked.

“Not bad,” said Manolo, and turned out his pockets. He put two bracelets and a wallet on the bed.

One of the bracelets was gold and the other glittered under the lamplight. Bob picked the wallet up and opened it. Fifty dollars, various membership cards and pictures of the owner’s kids.

“How did you get this?” he asked.

Manolo laughed. He pulled his shirt over his head and climbed into bed. There was only one, but they slept together platonically. Manolo didn’t want anything more from him, for which Bob was grateful. He wasn’t sure he could have performed with purple and yellow spreading across his face or his mouth throbbing the way it was. What kind of man would want him like this? Not one he wanted to be sharing a mattress with.

“Bobby,” he said. “How are you still so innocent?” He took the wallet and extracted the cash from it before giving the cards to Bob. “I’ll show you when we go out. Do any of those look like you?”

The I.D. didn’t, but there was a library card that Bob took since he didn’t have one. He could be Jacek Stefanowski when he needed to. The bracelets went on the nightstand and Manolo turned off the light. He was asleep almost immediately.

Bob stayed up, staring at the ceiling. He tried to work out how to tell rhinestones from diamonds.

He went to the library that week with his brand-new second hand card and picked up some etiquette books and records about elocution. They were all old. The books were written by Emily Post or contemporaries much like her and the records hummed and crackled like television static, scratching up the plummy tones of the narrators. But they helped him get the hick out of his voice. He would sit in front of the player, following the phrases and words as instructed, treating his vocal cords like an instrument instead of a coincidence. He memorized the rules from the books. Brought his clothes in for dry cleaning and shined his shoes. And then the bruises were gone, and it was time to go out again.

He and Manolo put on their Sunday best and hit up the resorts. Palm Springs was crawling with rich retirees who stopped by the hotel bars for their nightly drinks or to go for a dip and ogle the cabana boys while they were at it. Some of them even stayed there year round. These were men who were used to having staff at their beck and call, who had the wealth to pay for sunshine and a good view and freshly laundered sheets every single day. Former movie stars, oil tycoons, bankers. And they all had rooms just upstairs.

Except Manolo had other plans. His preferred marks were upper middle-class at most and he wasn’t interested in cruising them. He robbed them instead. “Why take some of their money when you can have all of it?” he said.

Not with a knife, or a gun, or anything violent, he reassured Bob. He was never harsh or demanding. He only got them a little drunk. A fiver to the bartender and those drinks got topped up right. “These are awfully strong,” a woman whom he was chatting up would say, laughing and waving her hand above the glass. Manolo had a type, the kind who haunted bars by themselves with stiff backs and anxious eyes and covetous glances in his direction. Who felt neglected by the husband or the wife or the kids.

The rich, he told Bob, were accustomed to suspicious men wanting something from them. Jane and John Lunchbox never saw it coming. So, the drinks. And then the opened purse, the nabbed wallet. If they were very drunk, he walked them back to their rooms so he could go through the drawers as well. He slipped bracelets off wrists and undid the clasps of necklaces quick as a card trick.

“They rarely report it,” he said, nonchalantly. “They don’t notice it at first. And then they think they lost whatever they’re missing. Or they are afraid of the husband’s reaction, the wife’s reaction, and so they say nothing.”

“That’s convenient,” Bob said, straightening out his tie. It was a hot night, and the suit felt too heavy on his skin. He tried to picture himself reaching into some man’s pocket or some woman’s purse and couldn’t. It gave him an ache inside that sat somewhere between nerves and nausea. “Aren’t you worried about getting caught? Someone could call the cops.” He thought about accidents, someone falling down the stairs because of the liquor or choking while they were passed out. Of family coming back to the room at the wrong time. Maybe even children, standing wide-eyed in the doorway while a stranger tossed Mommy’s and Daddy’s room. What would Manolo do? What would _he_ do?

“Darling, someone can call the cops every time you let a man give you a once-over,” said Manolo. “Someone did call the cops, that’s why you’re here. Isn’t it better to be nabbed for stealing? At least they won’t publish your name in the paper for taking a wallet.” He put his hands on Bob’s shoulders. “I only ask that you be your wonderful self. I’ll do the rest.”

Manolo wanted Bob to chat his marks up. He was good at it, he said. He put people at ease and he had a harmless look about him. “Be friendly,” he said. “And I’ll keep the drinks filled.”

He didn’t want to disappoint Manolo, who was the only person to stand by him. So he trailed after him, watching him cut through the glittering crowds like a shark. He lit cigarettes and talked current events and got really good at nodding and saying, “Yes, you’re right.” He leaned in flirtatiously but didn’t promise anything. It worked, more often than not.

They came home with strings of pearls, cash, signet rings. It wasn’t steady — some nights they didn’t get a bite at all — but it was something. Bob hated every second of it. It made him feel worse than turning a trick ever had. He hated most of all that he was starting to get good at it. Stealing and cheating was becoming easy. He could do it without thinking, could tailor his approach based on a few minutes of conversation. Manny was very impressed by his progress.

So when he found an invitation inside one of the wallets they lifted he viewed it as a kind of golden ticket. It was printed on thick paper with curly gold writing. A yacht party in honor of a regatta. There was only one of them.

He smoothed the wrinkles out of the paper, balancing it on his knee as they drove home in Manolo’s car (a gift from the Director, when things had been better between them). “I think I’m gonna go to this,” he said.

Manolo glanced over, his eyes tracking the letters. “San Diego?” he said. “You’ll have to take the bus up, I can’t lend you the car.”

“That’s fine,” he said. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Looking for a change of scenery?” Manolo asked, sounding mildly put out. Bob knew he wanted to firm up their partnership, possibly take it on the road.

“Something like that,” he said.

The party was genteel. The women drifted by in clouds of perfume and pastel summer dresses while the men wore boat shoes and drank scotch and soda. There was an open bar, and Bob leaned against it until he noticed a pair of eyes turned his way. They belonged to a man with the casual style of old money, nothing new or trendy except an expensive watch and a twenty-dollar haircut. He was trying not to look at Bob in a very familiar way. He wore a wedding ring, but no wife was present. Bob made his way over and he didn’t make eye contact once. He pretended to bump into him and was so very, very apologetic. There would be an expression of interest, he was sure. And there it was, a hand on his elbow, lingering a touch too long. He took a step closer and put on his best smile.

 

 

The snow that had been falling outside the diner window was a thick carpet by the last week of December. It crunched under their shoes and tracked water across the checkerboard floor as they found a booth, their usual with the peeling upholstery on one side. They were wrapped in layers: scarves and coats and Michael topped off with that absurd hat. His hair stuck up when he took it off.

“You know we don’t have to always come here,” he said. “There are plenty of other places in the city if you’re bored.”

“I don’t mind,” Bob said. He liked it, even. It was starting to feel like their place. The cook, taking his break at the counter with a huge pile of french fries, waved at them when they came in.

They’d had a meeting with Manischewitz that afternoon. Apparently they were happier with the work than they had been in some time. Michael had emerged from the boardroom twitching with relief. When they got back to the creative lounge he’d collapsed on the couch, face-down, making Bob laugh.

“I thought I was gonna lose that one,” he said. “I’ve been so fucking blocked lately. But it’s getting better. I feel like my head has more space.”

Bob thought he could give himself a little bit of credit for that. He was good at distracting Michael, who would hole himself up in an office breathing the same stale air twenty hours a day if he was left alone. It was Bob who suggested dinner and a movie to celebrate. They were going to see _The Graduate_ because _The Valley of the Dolls_ didn’t seem like Michael’s thing.

“So what are you doing for New Year’s Eve?” Bob asked, pouring ketchup on his plate.

“Working,” said Michael.

“On New _Year_ s?” Bob asked. “What deadline did they give you?”

“It’s not a deadline,” said Michael. “I don’t like New Years Eve and I’m not gonna stay home to watch my father play cards with a bunch of empty nesters.”

“Why not? It’s one of the easiest holidays. No family obligations, no pressure. Everyone’s amiable and drunk and just wants to have a good time.”

“Everyone’s desperate and scrambling around for some connection that’s only gonna evaporate as soon as the sun comes up,” said Michael. “Trying to get a kiss at midnight, trying to get a phone number, trying to get a cab in the cold or remember what their address is. It’s exhausting.”

“I like it,” Bob said. “I like how new everything feels for those first few minutes. A whole new calendar without a mark on it.”

“You’re an incurable optimist,” said Michael. “And I guess that answers my question about whether or not you have plans.”

Incurable optimist he must have been, because he ditched his own plans to stop by the office instead. Not that his plans were anything special. He had been debating going to the Stonewall to check out the festivities. It was New Year’s Eve and he didn’t want to spend it alone. But he could too clearly picture some busybody seeing him go in the building and calling the office. He knew men who had been fired for less. And he wasn’t entrenched enough, not yet, to conduct his personal life the way he wanted to. He needed to be indispensable. Good old reliable Bob Benson, who would never be caught dead at a place like that. He must have a lookalike, an evil twin.

It could wait. Bob was patient when he had to be. And he was good at setting his own needs aside.

Besides, he didn’t like the idea of Michael wandering around an empty office obsessing about the passing of time and therefore the inevitable march towards death and decay or whatever the hell he was going to do.

Bob found him in the creative lounge. Where else? He had come prepared; there were books on the table and a pack of cards and the radio was playing. Not Auld Lang Syne, not yet. But the sky had gone velvety black outside with the usual thin sprinkling of stars, the only ones you could ever see in New York. The warmth and light spilling out of the room made it look like an alien cocoon surrounded by darkness; peaceful and impenetrable. Bob stopped in the doorway, suddenly hesitant to interrupt.

Michael was standing by one of the corkboards, his hands in his pockets. He was wearing a t-shirt and jeans and was in his sock feet. It made him look younger, more his age. He might have been at a house party in some cramped apartment kitchen, chatting up a girl in a fringed vest and miniskirt. He didn’t hear Bob approach, his face turned towards an ad that was tacked up there. Volkswagen, Bob saw as he got closer. A bunch of kids piled into a bug.

Bob had never seen him so still or so quiet. He had the feeling he had accidently stumbled onto a private moment and should leave to make up for it. But he didn’t want to. He wanted to keep looking; at the quizzical twist of Michael’s mouth, at the curve of his spine under the shirt or the way his shoulders were slightly turned in, leaning forward.

He cleared his throat instead. It was only fair. No one liked being spied on.

Michael turned sharply towards the sound. He stared at Bob for a second like he was trying to puzzle him out.

“Bob?” he said, in confusion. “I thought — you aren’t supposed to be here.”

“No,” said Bob. “I mean, my original plans got canceled. And I wanted — I was wondering if you might want company. I can leave,” he added quickly, backpedaling. “If you want.” More and more he seemed like an intruder; Michael was clearly fine. He wasn’t whiling away the hours in loneliness, he’d come prepared for a quiet night by himself. He probably wanted it that way. Bob was blundering in like a drunk frat boy plowing through some kid’s sandcastle.

“What’s that?” Michael asked, pointing to the bag dangling conspicuously from Bob’s fist.

“Champagne,” Bob said, feeling pretty stupid.

“So there isn’t some party you’d rather be at?” Michael asked. “You’re all dressed up. Seems like a shame to waste it.” He looked down at himself. “I, clearly, was not expecting company.”

“You can’t just show up at those,” Bob told him, with a shrug. “You have to be actually invited.”

There was a long pause, and then Michael started to smile. “Okay,” he said. “Well, it’s your funeral. But now I wish I’d gotten more food; I only have the one sandwich there. We could go out and get something if you want. You shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach.”

“I’m fine,” Bob said. “I ate before I left the house.” It had been a TV dinner warmed up in the communal oven of his boarding house. Stringy green beans and beef that didn’t bear thinking about. He couldn’t wait to have his own kitchen again. And he didn’t really want to head back outside, into the crowds and the noise. The restaurants were all going to be packed, so who knew how far they would get from the office looking for a table. What he wanted, he realized, was to be invited in.

“I’ll give you half,” Michael said. He held up a hand when Bob protested. “It’s only fair,” he said. “You brought the champagne.”

They drank it out of coffee mugs. “Should we wait until midnight?” Bob asked.

“Nah,” Michael said, struggling with the cork until Bob took it away from him and opened the bottle himself. “I was thinking we could go up to the roof and watch the fireworks at midnight. If you’re not afraid of heights.”

“I’m not,” he said. “But don’t they have it locked?”

“They always forget to do it,” he said. “Some of the secretaries go up there to smoke.” He stood up. “And you know who else never locks his door? Harry Crane, and he has a TV.”

“Bert Cooper has a Rothko in his,” Michael said, from in front of the television where he was kneeling and changing the channels. He skipped past the New Year’s specials to land on an old movie, one Bob wasn’t familiar with. He did recognize William Powell, drinking debonairly at a bar in a light suit and chatting up a greyhound-sleek woman in an enormous hat. “I don’t see the point of spending that much money on something only to hang it in an office,” Michael said. “Not that I’m much of a Rothko fan. I always got a feeling that he’s tricking people somehow, painting a bunch of stripes on a canvas and fleecing some rich sucker for a million bucks. Though I guess I might do the same thing if I was an artist.”

“Aren’t you?” Bob asked.

“No,” Michael said decisively. “Selling something isn’t art. I used to think maybe I’d be a writer for real, a novelist or something but…” he waved a hand, getting up from the floor. “I’ve got to eat, right? And this job takes up all my time.”

“That’s very practical,” Bob said.

They’d pulled chairs over in front of the television, close together, and Michael took his while he swirled the champagne around in his mug. “Doesn’t sound like you approve,” he said.

“Oh, I’d never come down on someone for being practical,” said Bob. “I’m just saying I understand that certain sacrifices have to be made to get what you want. But it isn’t easy.”

Michael could have asked him what sacrifices he’d made, exactly. He would have been justified in the face of Bob’s lies and his fabricated background, because what rich kid would know anything about what a Michael Ginsberg went through day to day? But he didn’t. He nodded instead.

“It isn’t,” he said, like he was telling a secret, though what secret it was Bob couldn’t say.

Bob balanced his mug on the arm of the chair with the tips of his fingers on the rim. He looked sideways, carefully, at Michael. The champagne was raising a a bloom of pink in his cheeks and his curls were loose over his forehead. He was actually relaxed for once, slouching in his chair and watching the movie with a faraway, almost dreamy expression. He looked attractive, too much so, and Bob forced himself to turn away from temptation. He directed his eyes back to the screen.

“I’ve never seen this one,” he said. “Have you?”

“I have,” Michael said. “It’s called One Way Passage. He’s a murderer being sent to be executed and she only has months to live. They meet on this boat and fall in love.”

“That seems harsh for a love story,” Bob said. “How does it end?”

“They agree to meet up again on New Year’s Eve,” he said. “But of course they can’t. In the end we see the bar they were supposed to reunite at. Glass breaks, and the camera pans over to two smashed glasses, sitting alone without drinkers. Roll credits.”

“God,” said Bob. He drained the rest of his champagne and reached for the bottle on the floor. “That’s sad.”

“Is it?” Michael asked. “You could say they’re together forever. Death has no dominion, etc.”

“Do you believe in all that?” Bob asked.

“An afterlife?” Michael asked. “Or true love?”

“An afterlife,” Bob said. He knew the second one was real.

“Sometimes,” said Michael. “Just like sometimes I believe in God. You?”

“No,” Bob said. “I knew too many people who were so focused on what they were gonna get from God after they died to actually live now. Or to stay out of anyone’s business,” he said, remembering the gossiping about his mother, the judging eyes and turned backs. And he knew, without stretching his imagination, what those same people would think of how he’d turned out. “I have no interest in sitting in some pew on Sunday morning and listening to someone tell me why I’m going to hell,” he said. “And if I never see somebody’s Granny speaking in tongues again it’ll be a day too soon.”

Michael squinted at him. “Tongues?” he said. “In Westchester? I thought they were all Anglicans or Lutherans or something out there. They do that?”

Bob managed a shrug, which wasn’t as good as an actual explanation but thankfully Michael looked back at the television.

“Guess that’s one of those things I don’t know about Christians,” he said. “I knew some Catholics growing up, though. There was this priest that used to play chess with our Rabbi. He was from Sicily, I think.” He stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankle. “So do you not believe in — the other thing, either?”

It took Bob a minute. “You mean love?”

Michael swallowed visibly. The pink in his cheeks got worse, and he shifted in his chair. “Yeah,” he said, gruffly. “True love. You think that’s real?”

“Yes,” said Bob. “Do you?”

Michael smiled. “Sometimes,” he said. He nodded at the television and the glamorous doomed lovers therein. “You think you fall in love with someone you knew was dying? Knowing you’d lose them?”

“I know I could,” Bob said.

Michael swiveled towards him. “Really?”

“Yeah,” said Bob. “It wouldn’t matter to me. If I was in love I’d do anything to be with them. Any time we could have together — I wouldn’t waste it, I wouldn’t take the risk of missing out. Because who knows when you’ll get the chance to have something real again. Is that strange?”

“Maybe coming from a guy in your position,” Michael said. “Accounts men aren’t usually romantics, in my experience.”

“Well,” Bob said. “I have layers.”

Michael laughed. “You do,” he said, and picked up the champagne bottle. “Oh,” he said, in disappointment. “It’s empty.”

The movie ended the way Michael had described. He switched the set off and swayed unexpectedly into Bob when he stood back up. “Whoops,” he said, evening out with a hand on Bob’s chest. “I drank more than I thought.”

He didn’t move away, and Bob wondered if he could feel his heartbeat starting to speed up. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Michael. “I feel good.” He looked up into Bob’s face and there was a moment where it felt like he might do something else, where he leaned forward, and Bob thought — he thought —

Michael moved away all of a sudden, shoulders dropping. He passed a hand over his hair and blinked rapidly like he was trying to wake up. “I should have a cup of coffee before we go up,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to go over the edge.”

They went up to the roof about ten minutes to midnight. The door was open just like Michael said it was going to be. It was snowing, but it was a thin January snow, a dry puff of powder. The wind was worse, icy and insistent. Bob was acutely aware of Michael’s warmth next to him. He stepped into it, just a little. Up here the air smelled almost clean, a rarity in New York. It made his eyes sting, it was so cold and crisp. Sobered him up some. When Michael’s hand came up and closed around his shoulder, he didn’t react at all.

“Look,” Michael was saying, pointing out over the skyline at an explosion of red and gold, coming up on his toes in excitement. “Look, Bob. Fireworks.”

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for some slurs in this chapter but nothing you haven't seen in this fic before.

 

 

 

After the merger came a dizzying period during which Bob couldn’t tell if he was going to be fired or not. He wasn’t, he was, he wasn’t. He went home at the end of the week and fell immediately into bed. It was in his new apartment in the Village, the one he’d only just gotten. When the phone rang he groped for it blindly, not bothering to raise his head from the pillow.

“Hey,” Michael said, without waiting for Bob’s hello. “So did you survive the purge?”

“So far,” said Bob. “I’m guessing you did too?”

“Yeah,” Michael replied. “But poor Margie is out. She’s a tough broad, she’ll land on her feet. But it was like nobody thought she and Peggy could occupy the same space. Then again if another Jew walked through that door I probably woulda been walking out of it.”

“You worked with Miss Olson before, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, glumly. “She didn’t like me. So we’ll see how that goes.”

“Making enemies as usual.”

Michael laughed. “Fuck you,” he said, and then went quiet for a second. “I’m glad you passed whatever test they had in their heads,” he went on. “It would ruin my day if I went in on Monday and you weren’t there.”

Bob came over all flustered and was glad he was alone in his room with no witnesses. It was an affection so sincere he could barely endure it. “Me too,” he said, awkwardly. “If they fired you, I mean. It wouldn’t be the same.”

“Our luck holds for now.”

“For now,” Bob said. “Tell me if anything changes. You do have my phone number. If you ever left we wouldn’t have to lose touch, right?” He let the end of the question hang in midair and pretended he wasn’t waiting desperately for an answer.

“I will,” Michael promised. “You’re not getting rid of me that easy.”

The phone rang not five minutes after Bob hung up. “What?” he asked, pressing the receiver to his ear. “Did you get fired already?”

“Excuse me?” Joan Harris said.

“I thought you were someone else,” Bob told her.

“I assumed as much,” Joan said. “Are you busy?”

She asked him out to lunch, to his surprise. “I feel like I should pay you back for helping me the other day,” she said. “I might still be sitting in that emergency room if not for you.”

“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Bob said. “And I never did anything that someone else couldn’t have done.”

“Maybe,” said Joan. “But they didn’t.”

She took him to a place with a signature cocktail that had been praised by Craig Claiborne and a dance floor that was shiny with wax and the wear of thousands of feet. It was more old-guard than anything, but maybe that was Joan’s style; she was a classy woman, and didn’t seem like she was much interested in chasing trends. And she knew exactly what fork to use.

“Not a three martini lunch,” she said , opening a drink menu, “but I think we can get away with one.”

She asked Bob a lot of questions about himself, so smoothly it almost seemed like she wasn’t grilling him for information. Joan looked like a bowl of strawberries and cream but Bob could see a mind like a buzzsaw churning away behind her blue eyes. He wondered how many men couldn’t, and how often they had walked straight into a trap she made look harmless as a daisy. She was dangerous.

He also liked her, a lot.

She was bright and she was socially adept and she was entirely self-made. She had started at the company — the old company, she specified, back when it was still Sterling Cooper — as a secretary. Which was incredible. It seemed impossible.

“How?” Bob asked. “Not that I don’t believe you, but — I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

“You’ve never heard of the boy who started in the mailroom and climbed to the top of the ladder? It happens.”

“Sure it does,” Bob said. “But not usually —”

“To women?” said Joan. She looked amused. “I suppose that’s true. But don’t tell Peggy Olson, it’ll break her heart.”

“You don’t like Peggy?”

“No, I do,” said Joan. “I’ve known her for years at this point, since she was a secretary herself. She’s just very obvious at times.”

“She seems to loom pretty large in people’s minds,” Bob said. “Michael was talking about her as well.”

“Michael?”

“Michael Ginsberg,” said Bob. “We work together. I mean, we share an account specifically.”

“Manischewitz,” said Joan. “I know. Honestly, I forgot what his first name was for a second. No one ever uses it at work.”

“Really,” said Bob. “I never noticed. I wonder why.”

“You’ll have to ask him,” said Joan. She pushed her plate aside and lit up a cigarette, regarding him through the smoke. “Do you see him outside of work very often?”

“Occasionally,” Bob said. “Like we’re doing now. Why?”

“Just wondering if you’re one of our failed creatives,” said Joan. “Did you know that Ken Cosgrove writes science fiction? Or he used to, anyway. He was in the Atlantic.”

“Was it any good?”

“I can’t say it was my kind of thing,” Joan said. “But I’m not a science fiction reader. It always seems a little bit childish to me.”

“So I take it you’re not a Star Trek fan, either,” Bob said.

Joan slid him a sly glance. “Well,” she said. “That Mr. Spock isn’t bad.”

The music changed to something with a little more pep. Bob recognized it; he’d danced to this before, in ballrooms and at resorts. Mostly overseas. “Joan,” he asked, because she seemed like the kind of woman who might appreciate a little chivalry, “do you know how to foxtrot?”

Her eyebrows raised. “Do you?”

His answer was to stand up and offer her his arm.

She smiled, raising a hand to pat her hair into place before getting to her feet. “I suppose one dance won’t hurt. Or maybe two. I _am_ a partner, I can get away with a long lunch.”

Joan danced like she moved, precise and graceful. And Bob hadn’t lost the knack.

They started spending time together afterwards, in a casual and friendly way. He found her to be good company and they understood each other, he thought. They were similar under the surface, or maybe they just wanted the same things. Security and success. A bit of peace at the end of the day. Bob ran errands for her when she was busy. He met Kevin and Gail. They didn’t go on dates. Bob knew that Joan was getting a divorce and that her ex-husband was dragging it out. He was appropriately sympathetic and it wasn’t hard to be: she was a capable woman and he was sure she would be better off. Women usually were. He also knew what people in the office were saying about them.

Maybe it was a benefit in disguise. Bob was used to a very different and much more caustic element of gossip when it came to his personal life. If people thought he was sleeping with Joan — he wouldn’t lie if asked and he wouldn’t damage her reputation. If it kept the wolves from her door, or from his, then he wouldn’t be too quick to clear up the truth, either.

And then, one day when they were both working late, she called him into her office and asked him to help her get her dress off.

She phoned him from her office. “Thank god,” she said. “You’re still here.”

Bob’s forehead wrinkled. He took the pen he’d been gnawing on out of his mouth and pushed back from his desk. “Is something wrong?”

Joan sighed. “This is so embarrassing, but — I need to change for dinner, and I’m stuck in my dress. There’s something wrong with the zipper. I’d ask one of the girls for help, but no one else is here.”

“I’ll be right down,” Bob said, and returned the receiver to the cradle. He smiled a little at the idea of Joan trapped in her office waiting for rescue. If it hadn’t been him it would have to be the cleaning staff.

“My knight arrives,” she said, dryly, as he came through the door. “No suit of shining armor but you’ll do.”

She turned around to show him the problem, her dress half undone with a slash of her creamy slip showing through. Her hair was down, and she lifted it out of the way. He stepped forward to examine the snag, his fingers on the teeth of the zipper, and then he stopped.

It was late, and they were alone. She was partially undressed. He was going to help her go the rest of the way. He’d taken her out dancing. He had met her mother and her son. And she was single.

Had he led her on? Did she want — _him_? Joan played her cards close to her chest. He admired it. Understood it, even. She was also a deeper operator than he was. If she had feelings for him he might not know about it until she chose to reveal herself. Like right now, in the soft light of the lamp and the comfort of the shadows and his hands stripping her where she stood. She was undeniably beautiful. It could even have been romantic, if he was someone else.

Was it supposed to be romantic?

Bob’s palms were clammy. His fingers slipped on the zipper and he had an urge to tug at the fabric hard, to fix the issue by force. Get it open, get out of the room.

He needed an excuse, he thought. He needed one just in case, he should have planned ahead for this scenario. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d had to gently dodge a woman’s interest. But Joan was — this was Joan. He hated the idea of hurting her, even by accident.

“Is it stuck that badly?” Joan asked.

“No,” Bob said, snapping to attention. “I’ll get it.”

He got the zipper free and down the rest of the way. She looked back over her shoulder, smiling. “Thank you,” she said. “I owe you one.”

“No need,” Bob said, stepping back quickly enough that he stumbled. Suddenly he didn’t know what to do with his hands. “Happy to help. I’ll leave you to it.”

Joan responded with a long blink. “Bob,” she said. “Do you know why I asked you to come in here tonight?”

Something inside him froze up. “I’m sorry?” he said, trying desperately to keep his voice steady and pleasant and noncommittal. He was sure it was no use. His heartbeat could be heard in the streets outside.

“Because I needed help with my dress,” she said, crisply. “And that’s all.” She extended her arm. “Pass me that, would you?”

There was a garment bag hanging on the back of the door. He could see that now, and the faint shape of something shimmery inside. He’d walked right past it without noticing. With his face hot he retrieved it and handed it over, delicately, like a rare and breakable treasure was contained therein. He chewed on his lip.

“Joan,” he said.

“Don’t apologize,” said Joan. “And don’t act like you _weren’t_ about to apologize, either. I’m not insulted. I’m a little past being worried that someone thinks I’m that kind of girl,” she said. “I was done with the modest act at sixteen.” She leaned back against the edge of her desk, crossing her ankles and holding the dress in her folded arms. “Besides,” she said. “I know I’m not your type.”

Bob had been waiting for this moment since he walked through the door for his interview. On some level he always was. And here it was. All that was left was his response, and the fallout that would come after. No matter _what_ he said.

“No,” he said, surprising himself. “You’re not.”

She smiled. “Was that difficult?” she asked. “You look like you could use a stiff drink.”

“Joan, it’s — it’s always difficult.” he said. “Every single time.”

“So do you want that drink?”

“Will you tell anyone?” he asked.

Joan blinked. “No,” she said. “No, of course I won’t. I guess I thought you knew that. I’m not teasing you.”

“I can’t afford to assume,” he said. “Sometimes, in my situation, I have a friend one day and then I don’t the next.”

“You do need a drink,” she instructed. “Turn around so I can get into this and then I’m pouring you one. No arguments.”

She got him a scotch. The dress was beautiful, sequined and in an emerald green that set off her skin and hair. He had a moment of wondering what his life would be like if he could respond to that. If he could be married, living in the suburbs, carrying his children’s pictures around in his wallet. But he was made the way he was made. He didn’t feel bad about it.

“You look lovely,” he told her.

“Thank you,” she said. “Hopefully he’s worth all the effort.”

“If he isn’t,” Bob said, “it’s still a nice dress.”

Joan laughed. She sat on the desk and he moved up next to her and they remained in companionable silence for a moment. “Tell me,” she said. “Don’t you feel a little bit better, now that someone knows?”

“Not someone,” he said. “You.” Her fingers covered his briefly, and squeezed, and he let himself hold on.

 

 

Bob picked up the rental car far too early and spent an hour driving uselessly around the city, burning gas. He could expense it later. When the time came he parked in front of Michael’s building and got out. The streets were already busy and he had to squeeze in between the nose of a delivery van and the back end of a rusted Packard. He buzzed Michael’s apartment but no one answered. A few minutes later Michael himself appeared behind the foggy glass of the door, pushing it open with one hand. The other was wrapped around the handle of a cheap vinyl suitcase. It had stickers on it, so faded that he couldn’t see what was written on them except that the language was foreign.

“I could have helped you down with that,” Bob said.

“I carried this when I five,” Michael said. “I can manage it now.”

“Well, it’s not an airplane,” said Bob, opening the trunk. “But it’s something.”

“You’ll get no complaints from me,” Michael said, grinning. He was dressed casually, the way he had been on New Year’s Eve, a night that no amount of stern self-recrimination could prevent Bob from thinking of over and over again. “I’m excited,” Michael said. “Aren’t you excited?”

His enthusiasm was infectious. They were only headed to Vermont to tour a cheese factory that wanted to expand nationally and get the advertising to match. It was the kind of trip that nobody in Accounts ever wanted to do: no fancy dinners or hotels, no new cities and new women. So no one had cared when Bob volunteered himself, and no one had objected when he suggested taking Michael along.

He _had_ been hoping for a flight, because he knew Michael would have been so pleased by it. Still, he was pleased anyway. He rolled down the window and fiddled with radio and looked as relaxed as Bob had ever seen him. “I’ve never been on a road trip before,” he said. “I don’t think coming in from Europe counts. That was on a boat. Ellis Island and everything.”

“What part of Europe?” Bob asked. It was odd to think about. Michael seemed so completely American, so quintessentially New York.

“We were coming in from Sweden,” Michael told him. “But that’s not where I’m originally from.” And then he didn’t say anything else about it.

 

 

The cabin wasn’t like anything they called cabins back home. It was more of a cottage, with white walls and a blue roof and climbing vines all over one side. There were about ten of them, and Bob let Michael park the car while he picked up the keys for theirs. They could have gotten a motel room but this was the same price and Bob liked it better; it was quiet and private and surrounded by the kind of forest he hadn’t seen since leaving West Virginia. It was more manicured, though, with planned paths and signs at every crossroad so the hikers couldn’t get lost.

“Vermont sure is pretty,” Michael said, pausing to admire the birds singing in the trees overhead. “And I can’t say it doesn’t smell better than the city this time of year.”

“It’s too bad we couldn’t come out for fall,” Bob said, pushing the key into the lock. “It would be spectacular.”

“Maybe I’ll take a vacation,” Michael said. “I never take vacations. I think I’m owed one.”

The inside looked like any hotel room, with two beds and a bunny-eared television. There were homemade quilts spread across the mattresses. Michael threw his overnight bag on one and headed for the bathroom. “So,” he called out over the sound of the sink, “what do you want to do tonight? We have some time to kill.”

“I think we should eat, for one,” Bob said. They’d stopped at a roadside greasy spoon for lunch but he was hungry again. Driving always made him hungry. There wasn’t any room service but he’d spotted a restaurant by the rental office, and that was where they went.

“Are you nervous about tomorrow?” Bob asked after a mouthful of lemonade.

“I’m always nervous about these things,” Michael said. “But I do like the smaller companies. I think they appreciate what we do more.”

“I’m not nervous at all,” Bob said. “Because I have absolute confidence in you.”

“I’m glad someone does,” said Michael, a smile spreading across his face. “Everyone else acts like I’m going to explode all over the client.” Under the table, his feet slid forward, their ankles tangling together. He didn’t move them, not even when the waitress came by to refill their drinks.

Bob tried not read too much into it. He was trying very hard to keep his head firmly on his shoulders. Hope crackled inside him like an electric charge all the same.

Michael was still sleeping when he woke the next morning. Bob tried to be quiet as he got changed and fished his running shoes out of his bag, but Michael woke up all the same, sitting straight up in bed and looking wildly around him like he didn’t know where he was. His hair was an adorable mess, like he’d been in a windstorm rather than just asleep.

“Sorry,” Bob said, and sat down on the edge of his bed to put on his shoes. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Michael rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m a bad sleeper, I wake up at everything.” He glanced towards the window. “It’s still dark out. Where are you going at this hour? It’s so early.”

“Jogging,” Bob said. “That’s the point, it’s nice and cool out right now. Plus the sunrise’ll be spectacular. Want to come?”

“The only running I do is after the bus.”

“I can go slow.”

“Nah,” said Michael, and fell back heavily onto the mattress. “This bed is really comfortable. Wish I had one like it at home.”

He was up for real by the time Bob got back, sitting at the kitchen table and drinking coffee out of a mug. “They give you it,” he said. “There’s coffee, cream, tea, the whole bit. I’m pretty sure it’s free.”

“It is,” Bob said. “The minibar isn’t, though.”

“How was the sunrise?”

Bob smiled. “Beautiful. Did you see it?”

“I woke up five minutes ago. You want a coffee?”

“After my shower would be nice,” Bob said, and all he kept thinking, the whole time he was in there, was that he could unfortunately get used to this.

 

 

They spent the morning touring the factory, which was a wooden building only a couple stories high and every inch of it original from the mid nineteenth century. The walls, the signs, the grove of apple trees out back. Even the techniques of the cheesemaking were the same, their guide explained. It was pure New England quaint. It was also, according to Michael, a goldmine in terms of advertising.

“People love purity when it comes to food,” he said, “and this is as pure as it gets. It’s the real deal. Put a picture of this place all over your packaging. Put it in every commercial. Talk about the history of it. You have something the competition doesn’t. Think I’d tell Kraft or Land O’ Lakes to put their factory on anything? Think again. It would look dystopian.”

Their host was nodding, listening intensely, and Bob knew they had them, just like that. The presentation and the dinner afterwards were hardly needed at all. They were window dressing.

“You really _are_ good at this,” he said to Michael when they were driving back to the cabin.

“Thank you,” said Michael, grinning. “And I know.”

They were both too full of the day’s triumph to go to sleep, so they sat across from each other on the beds, trying to decide what to do instead. Michael was particularly fidgety, getting up to turn the television off and on, to look out the window or fuss with curtains. When he did sit back down his knee kept jiggling; Bob wanted to put his hand over it, to calm the frenetic motion down.

“I don’t wanna go home,” Michael said, all of a sudden. “I don’t mean ever, just — it would be nice if we could stay for a couple more days. Take that vacation I was talking about.”

“We could go for a hike.”

“Yeah,” Michael said. “Or go looking for antique shops, or whatever people do on vacations. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about vacations.”

“I don’t think there’s a wrong way to do them.”

Michael pulled a thread loose on the bedspread. “It was nice of you to bring me along,” he said. “I know I’m not anyone’s first choice.”

Bob frowned. He didn’t like the sound of that, not at all. “You’re my first choice.”

Michael let out a short, weak laugh. “Bob,” he said, and then put his head in his hands, the heels of them pressed up against his temples. “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he said, “because it makes my heart beat out of my chest. And because you wouldn’t want to, if you knew what kinds of things I was thinking about you. They’re —” He swallowed. “They’re bad.” The last word was almost a whisper.

Michael’s heart wasn’t the only one beating as fast as it could. Bob’s felt like it could be seen right through his skin. “Bad,” he said. “I don’t believe you. I don’t think they’re bad at all.”

Michael’s forehead creased. “They’re inappropriate.”

Bob reached out and wrapped his hands around Michael’s wrists. He pulled them away from his face (his pulse was humming, it was alive in his veins at Bob’s touch). Michael looked up with his lips parted and his eyes wide.

“Inappropriate like this?” Bob asked, and kissed him.

It was a risk, it was always a risk, but Bob knew he’d been right when Michael kissed him back, when he practically fell into his arms, his shaking hands balled up in front of Bob’s shirt.

“Oh, thank god,” he said, “I thought I’d ruined everything, I thought I fucked it all up —”

“Sweetheart,” Bob said, and Michael made a hungry sound against his mouth and kissed him again.

Bob wanted to go slow, he wanted to lay Michael out and take his time, but he couldn’t stop his hands from moving. He tugged Michael’s shirt out from his pants and popped the button open. “Let me take care of you,” he begged. “Let me make you feel good, I promise I will.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Michael said.

“I do,” Bob said, and pressed him back against the bed.

His urgency didn’t fade, but he did undress Michael slowly, peeling each layer away like he was opening a gift. He made him squirm with his mouth and his hands until Michael was pulling at his own clothes, complaining that it wasn’t fair, he wanted to see Bob, he wanted to be able to touch him.

Maybe that should have been his clue to put on a show, but he couldn’t wait; he popped one of his buttons getting his shirt off and threw his clothes on the ground like he was changing after a run. “You can touch anything you want,” he said, and Michael did, sliding his hands down his arms like he’d never seen anything quite so wonderful.

“God,” he said, “I can’t believe I get to do this.”

“You’re doing wonders for my ego,” Bob said, and let his eyes close when Michael cupped between his legs, as though testing his weight, his shape.

“You’re big,” he said, his voice gone hoarse. And then he closed his fist around Bob’s cock and started to stroke.

His grip was tight, hot, probably a little more careful of his foreskin than he needed to be. But it was still good, _very_ good, and Bob let his mouth rest at the juncture between Michael’s shoulder and his neck. He panted into his skin, hissing out a breath when his hand twisted just right.

“Oh, I like this,” Michael said. “I like the way you feel, I like the way you _sound_ —”

Bob pulled back. Michael’s hand was starting to get slick and Bob couldn’t quite keep his hips still. He felt drowsy with it, like he could just stay there and let Michael jerk him off all night. But he had bigger plans, and it wasn’t right to be so lazy. He was supposed to be showing Michael a good time. He gently disentangled himself.

“Was that, “ Michael said, “was — am I not doing it right?”

Bob kissed him, wet and open mouthed. He ran a hand through Michael’s hair and bit his earlobe, making him gasp and jump. “You’re perfect,” he said. “But I said I wanted to take care of you, remember?”

He coaxed Michael to the end of the bed and dropped to his knees.

“Oh,” Michael said, his eyes gone round.

“Oh,” Bob said, and pushed his thighs open. He kissed the inside of one of them and then got down to business, starting shamelessly with his mouth on Michael’s balls, licking up to the head of his cock and sucking him in.

“ _God_ ,” Michael said, and it sounded like a sob, like a prayer. He was grabbing at Bob’s hair already, his hips lifting off the bed. Bob encouraged him to fuck his mouth, taking him in easily, licking away the salt of his precome when he pulled back. He pumped him loosely with one hand, took a deep breath, and swallowed him all the way down.

Michael shuddered all over and made a sound like he was dying and then he was clawing at Bob’s shoulders, saying “stop, Bob, please _stop_ , I _can’t_ — you have to —”

Bob let him slide out of his mouth. His cock was shiny with spit, and Bob could still feel him at the back of his throat. He could have finished him off. He wanted to, wanted to suck him dry.

“Why?” he asked, his voice all scratches. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” Michael said, panting. “But I had about a second left in me. Your mouth should be illegal.”

“Technically it is,” said Bob. “You didn’t have to stop me, Michael. I want to make you come.”

“Fuck,” he said, “Okay, but — can you fuck me? Please? I think about it all the time. What it would be like to have you in me. I’ve gotta know. Even if I hate it I want to have tried. I swear to god, every time I touch myself it’s just right _there_ —”

Bob felt a nervous, excited flush settle over his face. It surprised him, that he could be nervous about sex. “I would love to,” he said.

He had vaseline in his luggage. Michael smiled as he watched him fish it out. “I know what that’s for,” he said. “Hoping, were you?”

“I’m always hoping,” Bob said.

There was a softness in the way Michael looked at him then, and in the way he reached out a hand to pull Bob down with him. “I know,” he said. “I like that about you.”

Bob liked a lot of things about Michael as well, and he told him about some of them as he fingered him open. Filthy, sweet, secret things that would have made the blush spread down his neck even if what Bob was doing to him didn’t. “I could watch you all day,” he said, “just like this,” and curled his fingers until he found what he was searching for. And then he rubbed and rubbed until Michael was biting his lip hard enough to leave a mark, fighting the raw and desperate sounds that were trying to escape his throat, and it turned out Bob liked _that_ too.

“And to think I thought you were too polite,” Michael choked out. “Can you do it now? I can’t wait anymore, come on.”

“Wait for what? I want to hear you say it.”

“For you to fuck me.”

“One more finger, sweetheart,” he said. “I want to stretch you a little more.”

“Oh, you asshole,” Michael cursed, his eyes popping open, and Bob laughed and kissed him. He spread his other hand across Michael’s chest to hold him in place and worked the third finger in, less gently than the other two, and oh, oh the _noise_ that was torn from Michael’s lungs. It would have been worth it even if he’d kicked Bob straight out of bed.

What he did do, instead, was let Bob arrange him on his back and put a pillow under his hips and push his legs apart. “You’ll let me know if you’re uncomfortable, right? If it hurts or you don’t like anything I’m doing?”

“Bob,” Michael said, sounding very impatient. “Have I ever stayed quiet when I don’t like something?”

“Well, no,” Bob admitted. He was very careful all the same.

Slow and easy, he thought. Slow and easy; short, shallow thrusts that were more a tease than anything, that made him grit his teeth against his own need to move. Michael was tense at first, breathing hard and clutching at the blankets like he was going to drift away. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling. But he didn’t ask Bob to stop. Gradually, he relaxed. He curled a hand around his cock and gave it an experimental squeeze, and Bob saw — no, _felt_ — him shiver at the intensity of the sensations.

“Oh,” he said. “This isn’t like anything else, is it? This is _new_.”

God, thought Bob. He wanted to remember this moment forever, Michael’s red cheeks and fogged-over eyes.

“Just wait,” he said, “we’re only getting warmed up,” and pulled out, making Michael whine at the loss. Before he could register a more articulate protest, Bob fucked back inside in one long, merciless stroke that made Michael grab at his arms, made his mouth fall open. It was the right angle. It was exactly the right angle. “I knew you could take it,” he said, “oh god, Michael, I _knew_ you could.”

“Fuck,” Michael said, suddenly frantic. “Oh my god. You’re going to kill me.”

“A little death,” said Bob, and Michael would probably get him for that one later, but not while he was fucking him, not when every thrust made him cry out. He looped his arms around Bob’s neck and held on tight, pulling him down to senselessly press his mouth against his cheek and the side of his jaw. He was trying to say something but it was lost, it was gone in the frenzy between their bodies.

It got loud near the end, and messy, all that vaseline and sweat and unapologetic need. Bob fucked him deep and fast and tender and almost slipped out once, except Michael had him, he wrapped his legs around Bob’s waist and he wouldn’t let him go. And Bob - Bob was losing it, he was falling apart and he couldn’t slow his pace, he couldn’t _stop_ or see past the starbursts in his head and then he was coming, coming in long agonizing pulses before Michael even did.

He licked the palm of his hand and stroked Michael from root to tip, pumping hard, hoping it would be enough. And it was, thank Jesus it was, Michael was spurting through his fingers and all over both of them. He went so tight around Bob’s cock that it almost hurt, but it was so good, too, and Bob shouted and thrust in one last time.

Michael winced when Bob pulled out. “I know,” Bob said, cupping his cheek and rolling to the side. “That part isn’t very fun, especially the first time.”

“Messier than I expected,” Michael said.

“I’ll get you a washcloth,” Bob said, and went to get one from the bathroom. He washed off himself while he was in there with a couple handfuls of warm water. The cloth he brought back into the room had little leaves all over it, in autumn colors.

“Here,” he said, and passed it over to Michael, who wiped himself down with a wrinkle of his nose and threw the cloth straight into the garbage can after he was done.

“That was embarrassing,” he said.

“You think women don’t have to clean up after sex?” Bob asked. He turned down the sheets and Michael climbed under them with him. “So,” Bob asked. “How do you feel? You can be completely honest, I won’t be offended.”

Michael took a minute to answer, and when he did his voice was thick with emotion. “I think I wanted that for a long time,” he said. “With you, yeah, but — with a man in general. This is the first time I haven’t been able to _ignore_ it.”

“Hey,” Bob said, when Michael started to blink rapidly, trying to push down whatever was welling up inside. “ _Hey_ , come here.” He drew Michael into his arms and was relieved to see he came without protest, hiding his face against Bob’s shoulder. “People get emotional after sex,” he said. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’m glad you couldn’t ignore it. And I’m honored you picked me.”

“You’re such a good person,” Michael murmured, unwinding under Bob’s hands. “I am so lucky.”

Bob pressed a kiss into his unruly hair, and he didn’t say anything. Because he wasn’t, he really wasn’t, but god he was selfish enough to want Michael to keep on believing he was.

 

 

When they were leaving the next day Michael caught the door from Bob’s hand and closed it before he could step outside. And then he kissed him, firmly, with a growing confidence.

“I don’t know when I’ll be able to do that next,” he said. Or if you’ll want me to, was the unspoken subtext.

“Are you busy this weekend?” Bob asked.

 

 

They held it together well at work, he thought. Nothing inappropriate, nothing to draw attention. No secretive touches in a darkened office, no letting his hand linger on Michael’s shoulder or the small of his back. At work they were only coworkers, a little too fond of each other but nothing that was worth looking at twice. Bob only looked, out of the corner of his eye or when nobody was watching him. He couldn’t help himself, his eyes drawn like a magnet.

At home, between the safe walls of Bob’s apartment, they were free. They could do anything they wanted and no one could stop them. They watched television together and went to the movies and for walks in the park. They fell on each other the second the door closed behind them, pulling at clothes, hungry for touch. Michael sucked him off for the first time on one of those days, pressed him back against the door and got on his knees, his mouth sweet and clumsy around Bob’s cock. (Bob didn’t last long; he’d been dreaming of this, of _exactly_ this.)

Michael spent most weekends there and also a couple of nights a week. He was a fitful, restless sleeper, waking easily from nightmares or noises in the apartment and Bob got good at instinctively reaching a hand out to soothe him. “It’s nothing,” he’d say, and, “I’m here.” He’d kiss away Michael’s whispered apologies. Sometimes in the morning before they got out of bed Michael read to him from whatever convoluted science fiction thing he was working his way through, until Bob distracted him with a hand creeping up his thigh. It was all so normal. Bob hardly knew what to do with himself, but then, neither did Michael. He made excuses to his father about work, saying he was burning the midnight oil.

“You could say you have a girlfriend,” Bob told him.

“No, I can’t,” Michael said. “Because I don’t.” And Bob loved him for his honesty, even when it scared him.

“It’s too bad you can’t come,” Bob said, while Michael watched him pack for a day at the beach with Joan and her family. “Didn’t you say you haven’t gone in years?”

“Yeah, but I burn like a boiled lobster,” Michael told him. “And I’m not much of a swimmer, either. Go, have fun. Buy the kid an ice cream on me and don’t let him get sand up his nose.”

“Let me guess,” said Bob. “That happened to you.”

“Naturally,” said Michael.

Bob did in fact buy Kevin an ice cream with the money Michael gave him, and helped him build sandcastles and kept him from getting sand up his nose. Joan waited for her mother to head for the surf before pulling a small flask out of her purse. “What?” she asked, when Bob looked over at her. “I didn’t want to share. You know how she gets when she’s drunk.” She settled back on her beach towel and opened a book but didn’t read it. “So,” she asked. “How have you been lately?”

“Fine,” he said. “What do you mean?”

“You seem happier,” she said, mildly, like she wasn’t blatantly fishing for gossip. “And you’re not the only one, are you? Creative has been so much easier to deal with.”

Bob stared at her, knuckle deep in wet sand. “How —” he said, but Joan only quirked an eyebrow at him. “Give me that,” he said, and reached for the flask.

She gave it to him, but she also laughed at him.

“Yes,” he said, afterwards. “I’m happy. And I — I hope that he is, as well.” It felt so strange to say out loud, so completely dangerous. His throat went tight with long remembered fear. But it was only Joan, who would never tell; and Kevin, who didn’t understand what was going on.

Joan flipped a page in her book. “He better be,” she said, tartly, and smiled at him.

 

 

Chevalier Blanc was twenty minutes late, and that meant Harry Crane was bored. He was flipping through a magazine, making comments about the women pictured within that Bob really could have done without. Thank god Harry didn’t expect him to participate; he was too self-absorbed for that. He just liked to hear himself talk.

When he reached the end of the magazine he threw it down and seemed to remember that Bob was there. “Ten minutes more and I’m leaving,” he said.

“I’m sure he’s stuck in traffic,” said Bob.

“And I’m sure he took too long doing his makeup,” Harry said.

Bob’s back went rigid. It was an animal instinct that made the hair on his arms stand up and years worth of practice that kept the tension from showing on his face. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “You will when you meet him.”

But Bob didn’t need to meet him, not really. He could have picked him out of a lineup. Not because Rick was as flamboyant as Harry claimed, but he wasn’t hiding, either. He gave Bob a distinctly interested smile when he came in, and Bob felt his fingers start to twitch with nerves.

It was an irrational response. Rick wasn’t doing anything. He wasn’t doing anything. And, a voice said in his head that sounded far too much like Michael, Harry never _knew_ anything. He might suspect, he might gossip, but Bob was used to existing in a gray area.

Rick wanted to talk about getting better television spots for their commercials. They were coming on too late at night, when the old timers were watching their talk shows. They wanted a younger customer.

“Television’s complicated,” Harry said. “It takes time to work your way up. Obviously they give precedence to the big companies. You have to form a relationship with them.”

“So tell me what wheels to grease,” said Rick, smiling, “and I will. I can be pretty charming, you know.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. “I bet.”

Rick blinked. “I’m sorry?” he asked, coolly.

“Harry can talk to the network,” Bob interrupted. It was that or kick Harry under the table, Jesus Christ. “He’s heading out to LA in a couple of weeks. Isn’t that right, Harry? Talk to them about the commercial airing during a more youth-oriented program. I’m sure we have room in the budget for that.”

Harry set his jaw. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll give it a shot.” Bob ignored the way he was looking at him.

He walked Rick to the elevator. It was an excuse to get his head together as much as anything. It also wasn’t working. If he was smart, he thought, he’d have immediately distanced himself from the situation and from Rick in particular. But he found he didn’t want to have to be smart, anymore. He was angry, suddenly, that he had to be.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Rick asked.

“What?” Bob asked, and then shook his head. “I’m sorry. That was rude.”

“It really wasn’t,” Rick said. “And thanks, by the way, for sticking up for me in there.”

Bob shrugged. “It’s my job.”

Rick gave him a long, considering look. “I think we both know it wasn’t,” he said. He turned towards Bob, moving in a step closer. “You know,” he said, “I don’t get to come into New York all that often. Not enough to be familiar with it. I could use a guide, if you were free. I’d pay for dinner.”

On instinct Bob checked back over his shoulder. The glass doors to the office were still closed, and the lobby was still empty except for the receptionist, who was working on her typewriter with her head down.

“Nobody’s watching,” Rick said.

“You’re right,” Bob said. “No one is. But I can’t. Not that I don’t appreciate the offer. I’m — I’m actually seeing someone.”

“Lucky him,” Rick said, and Bob walked back into the agency with a band of heat at the back of his neck. When he arrived at Ken’s office Harry was already in there, complaining. Of course. Bob brushed past him without speaking and went straight for the liquor cart.

“You want some ice with that, Benedict Arnold?” Harry asked.

“I fixed a problem,” Bob said. “I didn’t sell you to the enemy.”

Harry wiped his mouth off. He was drinking, too. That was just what they needed. Everyone could get liquored up and have a good old-fashioned brawl. “Want to tell Ken how much you fixing this problem is gonna cost?”

Bob set his empty glass down on the edge of Ken’s desk. “I don’t know,” he said.

Ken raised his eyebrows. “Don’t you?” he asked, very mildly, like they were discussing misplaced paperwork and not tens of thousands of dollars.

“No,” Bob said. He pushed his teeth together so hard he felt a throb in his gums. “But I do know that you can’t treat a client like that and not expect him to take his business elsewhere.”

“I didn’t even _say_ anything.”

“But you wanted to,” said Bob. “And he could tell. He could tell what was on the tip of your tongue and so could I.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, like he was daring Bob to be the one to say it out loud. Like he didn’t think he’d dare. Only straight men got to swing the baseball bat, after all. “And what’s that?”

“You were calling him a faggot,” Bob said, acid climbing up his throat. “But with plausible deniability.”

There was a ringing in his ears, afterwards. In the midst of it Ken stood up, his hands held apart like he was pushing them away from each other though they were not touching. “Enough,” he said. “You both need to cool off. Back to your offices, now. And no contact for the rest of the day.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Bob. “I’m going home.”

“You’re what?” Ken asked, startled.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Ken,” Bob said, and closed the door firmly behind him as he left.

But he didn’t go home. He went to a bar, the kind he’d been avoiding. The dead leaves from a few scattered and sad sidewalk trees crunched under his feet as he went down the steps, his collar turned up against the sharp autumn wind. Like most of these places, it had discreet signage and no real way to see inside. He closed his eyes against the warm blast of air as he stepped through the door. It felt a little like coming home.

“I just need a drink,” he said to the bartender. “And quick.”

His sustaining anger from earlier was gone, leaving him hollow and cold. He felt stupid and small. He’d taken a huge risk, talking to anyone at work like that. And now he was going to pay the price. Maybe not only him.

Because that was the thing gripping him with a sick fear that he was already throwing a second drink on top of; he wasn’t alone in this. For the first time, he might drag someone down with him. The men he’d been with before could survive any blow that befell him. Money smoothed out scandal more often than most people knew. Bob had few illusions that they would damage anything — a reputation, a marriage, a career — for the likes of him. But Michael — Michael would follow him out that door if anyone caught wind of what they were doing. He might even do it deliberately.

How much had Harry guessed? What about Ken?

Two drinks turned into three. Might as well drink while he could afford it, he thought, and pretty soon he lost track and the room was listing and there was a man’s hand on his shoulder.

He slapped it away. “Don’t,” he snapped. “I have a boyfriend.”

“Does he have a phone number?” the bartender asked. “Because I think we need to call him.”

Michael came to pick him up in a cab. The bartender helped get him into the back and the driver helped get him into the elevator of his building. He squeezed his eyes shut, the contents of his stomach jostling dangerously as he felt it start to move.

“So you want to tell me what this is about?” Michael asked. He’d seated Bob at the kitchen table and was brewing coffee. “Since when do you skip work to go get drunk?”

“Since today,” Bob said. “I did something really stupid.”

Michael drew in a sharp breath. “At the bar? With someone at the bar?”

“No,” Bob said, with a startled hurt glance across the table at him. “I’m not — I wouldn’t. I’m always faithful. When it actually matters, I’m faithful.”

Michael rubbed a thumb across his eyebrow. “Then what?” he asked, looking like he was bracing himself for the worst. “Just tell me. Pull the bandaid off.”

“I think I outed myself at work,” Bob said. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

There was a long silence, during which Bob could not meet Michael’s eyes. “Oh,” Michael said, finally. “I really thought I’d be the one to do that.”

“You’re not mad?” Bob asked.

“No,” Michael said. “But I’m confused. What exactly happened?”

“Rick Swanson was in,” said Bob. “And Harry made this comment —”

Michael sighed. “Of course.”

“ —- and I accused him of wanting to call Rick a faggot and I stormed out.”

“Okay,” said Michael. “Well. That’s not good, maybe. But you didn’t exactly sign a sworn affidavit either. They don’t have _proof_.”

“That’s not all,” Bob said, miserably, because he had come to a conclusion in the bar. And he was going to stick with it, no matter how much it destroyed everything they’d been building together. Michael deserved the truth, pathetic as it was. “If they — if they decide to look into my background, they are going to find out,” he looked into Michael’s face (beloved, familiar, and soon to be lost to him), “that it’s a lie. I’m a lie. I am a complete fraud.”

“ _What_?” Michael asked. “How?” Bob hardly heard him.

“I didn’t go to Wharton,” he said. “I’m not from here. I never went to college at all. I grew up in West Virginia. I’m — a fucking hick, I’m a nobody. And I used to — I used to —” He set his jaw. “I used to sleep with men for money. There. Now you know.” It came out like a purge. He felt like he’d thrown up, though he hadn’t. Yet.

“I knew you weren’t from New York,” Michael said.

“How?”

“Bob, come on,” he said. “I grew up here. I know a New Yorker when I meet one.”

“Why didn’t you ask?”

“Because I thought you’d tell me the truth eventually,” Michael said. “I wish this wasn’t why. I wish you’d just — did you not trust me? Is that it?”

“No,” Bob said. “I’ve always trusted you. I was the one lying to _you_.”

Michael got up and went to the coffee pot and came back with two mugs. He slid one over to Bob. It was black and bitter, probably the better to wake him up. “Is there anything else I should know?”

Bob looked down at his knuckles, white, wrapped around the mug. He could almost see his reflection in the shiny surface of the liquid. “Don’t you want to know why?” he asked.

Michael was quiet for a long minute. “Do you wanna tell me why?”

“Because I had no money,” he said. “And then I had no work history. And I had this boyfriend who used to — god, forget it.” Bob rubbed at his eyes until he saw stars. “He doesn't matter. What matters is what I did. And I wanted to stop, I did, and when I got fired from Brown Brothers Harriman —”

“You were actually there.”

“It wasn’t a real position,” Bob said. “I was with one of the partners at the time. He created it for me. Anyway, his wife found out and she threatened a very public divorce, so that was it for me. I couldn’t even get into my apartment. I came home and the locks were changed. I had some clothes. A little money in my bank account. That was about it. I’d made a few business connections who didn’t know what I was actually doing. That’s how I heard about the job at SCDP. And then I just — lied. I lied and lied and lied. I let you think I was someone I wasn’t. And now I’ve probably screwed you out of a job, too.” There was a coffee stain on the table cloth. He’d dropped some from the mug, his gestures thick and clumsy. “And that’s everything.”

“It’s a lot to take in.”

“I can help you pack up your things if you want,” Bob offered. “What do you have here?”

Michael stared at him. “Are you breaking up with me?” For the first time he sounded angry.

“Don’t you want to?” Bob asked.

Michael brought his coffee cup to the table with a thump. “No,” he snapped. “I don’t. Don’t assume you know what I want. You’re not the only one with secrets, Bob. I haven’t told you everything about myself, either.”

“I’m sorry,” Bob said.

“I’m not interested in an apology. I’d rather you be honest. That’s all I’m asking for.”

“I just liked you so much,” Bob said. “I wanted you to like me, too. I wanted to be impressive.”

Michael put a hand over his eyes. For a horrible minute Bob thought he was crying, but when he pulled his hand away his eyes were dry. “Jesus Christ,” he said, with a short laugh. “You _are_ trashed. I think you need to go lie down.”

“It’s too early,” Bob said.

“The sun is setting,” Michael told him, and when Bob looked towards the window he could see that Michael was right. It was all red, red, red until it was black, and his eyes were closed, and he couldn’t see anything at all.

 

 

Bob woke up with the worst headache he’d ever had and the conviction that when he opened his eyes he would be alone. He kept them closed for an extra minute in order to avoid the confirmation. He was wrong. Michael was, miraculously, still in bed with him, lying on his side and facing the alarm clock. Bob put a wondering hand on the curve of his spine, overwhelmed with affection and tenderness.

He slid his arms around Michael’s waist and waited for him to stir before pressing a kiss to the back of his neck. “Morning,” he said. “We’re going to be late.”

Michael yawned. “No, we aren’t. I called us in. Said you were sick.”

Bob frowned. “You called me in? How did you explain that?”

“I called Joan direct,” said Michael. “She’ll figure out the rest of it.”

“Oh,” said Bob, not sure what to make of Michael knowing he should call Joan. He let it go. “So you’re going to stay here with me?”

“Of course I am,” Michael said. “I told you so last night. How much of that do you remember?”

“Enough of it,” said Bob. He listened to the tick of the clock and the movements of the man in the apartment above, muffled footsteps through the ceiling. He almost drifted off again, but Michael was too sleep-warmed and appealing to leave alone. He pressed his hips up against him and slid a hand slowly beneath the band of his shorts.

Michael laughed into the pillow. “Right now, you big weirdo?” he said. “You must be hungover as hell.”

“But I’m your weirdo, right?” Bob asked. He curled his hand around him and stroked, feeling his cock fatten up.

“Yeah,” Michael groaned. “Mine mine mine. All mine.” A little shiver worked its way down his back, and Bob followed it with his mouth.

“Come take a shower with me,” he said.

“Fine,” he said, “but brush your teeth first. You still smell like a distillery.”

 

 

(Later, Bob would draw the shades and pull Michael back into bed. They would lay facing each other, and Bob would ask, what was it that you weren’t telling me?

I was born in a concentration camp, Michael would tell him. I missed most of my last year of high school because I was having a breakdown. My father worries that I’ll have one again. Don’t look at me any differently. Please don’t.

I won’t, Bob would say, and he would kiss him over and over again. I won’t. I won’t.)

 

 

They went to Joan’s for Thanksgiving that year. Morris came along, wearing a black suit that Michael said made him look like he was going to a funeral. He stared at Bob hard enough to make him sweat, but he shook his hand when it was offered. He also descended upon Kevin the second he saw him, scooping him up above his head and making him squeal and kick his little legs in joy.

“He likes kids,” Bob observed.

“Probably thinking about all the grandchildren he’ll never have,” Michael said.

“You told him,” Bob said.

“Yup.” Michael snuck a glance sideways, his forehead creasing. They were sitting of the couch, watching the parade on television. “He knows. It’s a big step. Does that scare you?”

“Not at all,” Bob said, and for once he was telling the perfect truth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
